Tag Archives: Public Holiday

An angry mother complained about a childcare at Sengkang/Buangkok that overcharge parents for kids' meals, excursions and everything else! The childcare claimed the $22 meal was because it was an "international buffet". What, a buffet consisting of nuggets, fishballs, chicken wings and beehoon?

As all Singaporean knows that in few weeks time is LKY death day with is in 23 March and at that day our government is going to talk about LKY over and over again about how good is he etc. So what I think is if our government is going to commemorate LKY again why don't every year 23 March make it into a public holiday. Better and I think that Singaporean deserve a public holiday too as they kept on working long hours everyday and they deserve a off day too.

This is history in the making and the country should be given the opportunity to celebrate this sweet moment of victory for our little nation. I believe not only myself but many other Singaporeans would love and appreciate if the government will do the right thing and declare Monday a one time public holiday to celebrate this historic moment. nlike the table tennis bronze medals we get, this is so much more meaningful to Singaporeans and should be celebrated in style. Will you heed our calls and give us that victorious public holiday?

A Singaporean couple who started an online petition for an annual public holiday to honour the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew have received a death threat. Businessman John Lim and his wife, Madam Tan Lay Geok, started the website – www.lkyday.com – to petition the Government to declare 23 March a public holiday. This was the day Mr Lee died.

In the wake of the President declaring 7th August a public holiday, Halimah Yacob has called on Singaporeans to not go overseas and join in the SG50 celebrations instead. “My appeal to Singaporeans is to please stay in Singapore during the long weekend. I understand that Singaporeans take the opportunity during periods of long weekends to chill out with their families overseas, and on other occasions that’s all right, but on this occasion, I hope that they will stay and really celebrate together as a nation. It will be really sad if a quarter of Singapore goes overseas to celebrate.”

Our calendar of public holidays is a reflection of our multi-ethnic, multi-religious society. But any move to reinstate any one festival as a public holiday will immediately invite competing claims, and necessitate considerable renegotiation with all communities. Balancing the wishes of each community will not be a simple matter. Neither can we simply re-allocate public holidays by ethnic group, as amongst both Chinese and Indians we have citizens of different faiths.

I read the news recently about Hindu devotees, who have demanded that the government grant them an additional public holiday for Thaipusam and allow them to play musical instruments during the Thaipusam procession. I fully support their actions as I think all religions should have the right to freely practice their own religious rituals. In the same vein, I think Taoists should also be given more freedom to practice their own religious beliefs. Taoists should also get an additional public holiday for our festivals, none of which are "official" public holidays in Singapore.

Back in 2012, Finance Minister made the following statement about Thaipusam becoming a public holiday. He said that Thaipusam would not be gazetted as a public holiday because it would "raise business costs and affect Singapore's economic competitiveness". Do you think it is a valid reason to reject a Thaipusam public holiday?