“Over the past few weeks, aside from Clean Monday, we had the 25th of March and the 1st of April fall on Mondays. Three long weekends. Families enjoyed them. Let’s revisit my proposal to move public holidays to create 10-15 long weekends. A blessing for families.”
This proposal was made by Averof Neophytou in a post on Platform X, following the recent long weekends due to public holidays.
Essentially, Averof Neophytou reintroduces an old proposal of his, which he had submitted to the Parliament in 2010, along with the then-member of the DISY party, Christos Stylianides.
In his original proposal, Neophytou stated that there are 15 public holidays a year, many of which fall mid-week.
Back then, he called on the government, employers’ organisations, and social partners to move some of the holidays falling on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday to Monday or Friday, thereby creating long weekends for workers to enjoy with their families.
This way, they would have eight to ten long weekends a year.
Averof Neophytou expressed the opinion at the time that both the state and businesses would also benefit from increased productivity.
He further clarified that his suggestion did not concern changes to national or religious holidays, as those would remain unchanged.
As Neophytou explained to philenews, the measure is applied in the UK and other countries without any additional cost to the economy. These are what are known as bank holidays.
