Public and Bank Holidays, 2024

Public and Bank Holidays, 2024

The public and bank holidays for 2024 have been released, in accordance with the first and second schedules to the Holidays Act, Chapter 289 of the Laws of Belize, Revised Edition 2011. Outside of the Easter holidays, there will be six extended weekends – two in January, one in March, one in April, in lieu of Labour Day, one in September and one in October. September tenth, however, will be recognized on the ninth while Emancipation Day, Garifuna Settlement Day as well as Christmas and Boxing Day all fall during the work week. The minister responsible for holidays is Kareem Musa.

Kareem Musa

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs

“If you look at whenever we do have the tenth holiday, and I am pretty sure this is not the first time we are moving it to a Monday, that is during our September celebrations and so you normally have events that are planned for that long weekend. Normally the tenth and the twenty-first if they fall close to a Monday or a Friday that is when the holiday is normally celebrated. And so you would have events like the Belikin Fest, the Carnival – these types of events are normally held during that time. And so that was the thinking behind it to move it to a long weekend and make it a Monday holiday instead of a Tuesday.”

Reporter

“And Emancipation Day is being celebrated on the Thursday. Why wasn’t it…”

Kareem Musa

“We took into consideration, as you know, Miss Ya Ya Marin has been advocating for the observation of that holiday. I had promised it on the last occasion about a year ago because they wanted it to be shifted last year, but so many people had already made adjustments to their calendars, the schools had already made adjustments, the workplace had made adjustments. And so now that holiday in particular will be observed on the day itself which I think is the Thursday.”