Do we have too many public holidays compared to other nations?

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

22 February 2026

Is it possible to announce the date of the Idd holidays well in advance? The answer is yes! I have explained in past articles that the motion of the moon is so well known that we can predict when it will next appear to within a hundredth of a second! Furthermore, these public holidays are always announced BEFORE the date. Therefore, there absolutely no reason to wait until the last three days to announce the date of public holidays that depend on the sighting of the moon: if we can make the announcement it 3 days ahead, why not 30 days (one month) or 300 days (one year) in advance?

I think we need to amend the Public Holidays Act to require that any announcement of a public holiday should only be done at least 90 days (about three months) in advance. I shared this idea recently on the Internet and some one responded by claiming that public holidays are an additional tax on citizens.

His argument went like this: Kenya has about one million public service workers who are paid about SH1.2 trillion annually, which is about Sh100B monthly. There are 20 working days in a month which means we pay Sh5B daily in public service wages. Thus, he concluded that one public holiday wastes Sh5B in lost productivity since services are not rendered.

My reaction to that was to ask why we are leaving out the weekends. Every seven days we take two days out of work. In addition, we also take a minimum of 21 days every year as annual leave. There are also the maternity and paternity leave days that workers get when they have babies. My thoughts are that society has agreed to allow workers to take Saturdays and Sundays off as well as public holidays. After all; “all work and no play makes Jane a dull girl” applies to all people, not just children!

Consequently, when salaries (the Sh1.2T annual wage bill) are set, the days off are taken into account. That’s why workers are paid “over-time” when they work of the off days.

All in all, out of the 365 days in a year, Kenyan workers get 105 days off on weekends, 21 days leave and 12 public holidays. That’s a minimum of 138 days off leaving just 227 actual working days annually.

The question arises: do we have too many public holidays compared to other countries. The median around the world is 13 days so we are just below the average. Not bad.