West Bengal has announced a long list of holidays for state government employees for 2022, a repeat of the last two years when it proved pointless as people stayed home anyway due to the pandemic.
According to the 2022 calendar of the state government released last week, the total number of public holidays was 48. It is a different matter that 11 of these days are Sundays, due to which the beneficiaries are very sad. But they still enjoy 37 vacations a year, something their counterparts in other states would probably want.
“in debt” [State] The government is unable to increase our dearness allowance – the DA we earn is almost 30% less than that of central government employees – so it is compensating us for holidays,” said a civil servant Hindu, asking not to be named.
Unlike many other state government employees, the officials were not too concerned about the fact that many public holidays fell on Sundays in 2022. “I am sure the government will get closer to the relevant dates for this conflict,” said the civil servant. In fact, the list already makes for a tussle: usually, the day after Saraswati Puja is also a holiday. , but the next day of the festival is a Sunday in 2022, a day before Saraswati Puja is declared a holiday.
State government employees will also have to stay away from work for one third of the month of October due to Durga Puja. The puja holidays start from 30 September and go on till 10 October. Kali Puja, which will take place after the long puja holidays, will be closed for three days.
double in 2020
It was in late 2019 that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, often accused by her detractors of being on the side of Muslims, doubled the number of holidays allowed for several Hindu festivals in the 2020 calendar. Clearly, his eyes were on the assembly elections that were close at that time. But those additional holidays are now a permanent part of the government calendar. Saraswati Puja, Holi, Chhath and Eid-ul-Fitr are now marked with two-day holidays in West Bengal. The festivals of Shivaratri and Janmashtami, which are more popular in North India and rarely celebrated on a large scale in West Bengal, were also notified as public holidays in late 2019.
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