WORLD OF FIGURES: Why public holidays should be declared  a year in advance

All cases that were scheduled for hearing on September 12 have had to be postponed. The reason is that on Friday, September 9, the government declared that Monday would be a public holiday to celebrate Id-Ul-Adha. The declaration was a surprise to the majority of citizens because this important day in the Islamic calendar is normally not a public holiday.

All the court cases scheduled to be heard that Monday will now be pushed to the end of the queue in the court diaries. Since the backlog runs between six and nine months, nearly all the cases may now be heard in 2017.

This is just one sector of the society that was greatly inconvenienced by the abrupt declaration of a public holiday.

Now, let me be very clear from the outset: I am not against declaring religious celebrations as public holidays. My concern is in the manner that this is done — with very little prior notice.

Now Islamic holidays depend on not only the appearance but also on the sighting of the moon. Therefore, it is generally assumed that it is impossible to tell the exact date when the public holiday should be set. I disagree with that notion.

DECLARED IN ADVANCE

Whereas every effort should be made to ensure that the two coincide, the public holiday must be declared in advance. This is always done a few days ahead. The question I ask is: can’t we get a fairly accurate prediction of the date of the public holiday a year ahead of time? I believe we can. Now, you don’t need any special equipment to study the phases of the moon to a very high degree of accuracy.  You don’t even need a clock to get extremely accurate timings! All it takes is long term observation and counting the number of cycles completed. Then divide the total number of days by the number of cycles observed.

If the observation is done over a duration of, say, 10 years (3,650 days) the resulting time period of the moon cycle will be accurate to within one hour! Extend that to 100 years (36,500 days) and the accuracy improves to plus-or-minus a few minutes.

Using slightly more accurate timing equipment (normal clocks), the duration of the moon’s cycle has been measured to an accuracy of plus-or-minus a tenth of a second. With this knowledge, it is possible to accurately predict the date of any lunar-based holiday many years in advance. Indeed, I have seen a Saudi-Arabian calendar with prediction of the dates of Idd-Ul-Fitr for the next 100 years.

With all that in mind, I think the law should be amended to require that a declaration of a public holiday shall be made at least 12 months in advance. After all, the next Idd-Ul-Fitr is expected to be on June 26, 2017. So what are we waiting for? That public holiday can be declared today.

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