Eid holidays to begin from 19 April

Staff Reporter :
As the Cabinet on Monday decided to declare a holiday on April 20, Thursday, to facilitate public travel ahead of Eid-ul-Fitr, this year’s five-day Eid-ul Fitr holidays will begin on April 19, Wednesday.
Apart from it, the Cabinet also approved the draft of “Production, Storage, Transfer, Transportation, Supply, Distribution and Marketing of Food Products (Prevention of Prejudicial Activity) Act, 2023” keeping the provision of maximum lifetime imprisonment for illegal hoarding of food products in the proposed law.
The approval was given in the Monday’s Cabinet meeting held with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the Cabinet room of the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban in Dhaka.
This year, the Eid holidays were supposed to be from April 21 to 23 (from Friday to Sunday) with the Shab-e-Qadr holiday falling on April 19 and April 20 was supposed to be the last working day before Eid.
The Cabinet agreed to declare the Thursday as holiday with executive order.
“The decision of declaring April 20 as holiday was taken in the Cabinet meeting. Thinking about the people, the government has taken this decision,” Cabinet Secretary Mahbub Hossain said on Monday while briefing media after the meeting held at the Cabinet conference room in Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban.
The holidays will run till the day after Eid beginning from April 19, the Cabinet Secretary added.
Several organizations including Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samiti proposed to the government to extend the Eid holidays by one day for the ease of the holidaymakers who will be travelling out of Dhaka.
Mahbub Hossain said that the new law has been framed in the combination of two old laws – ‘The Food (Special Court) Act, 1956’ and ‘The Food grains Supply (Prevention of Prejudicial Activity) Ordinance, 1979’. Once the new law is passed in the Sangsad, the previous laws would not be effective anymore.
In the draft law, mainly offences related to the production, storage, transfer, transportation, supply, marketing and distribution of food grains like paddy, rice, wheat, flour, and corn have been identified.
The punishments have been prescribed for those offences as per the magnitude of the crimes, he said.
The Cabinet also cleared the draft of Bangladesh Dairy Development Board Act, 2023 to produce the quality milk and milk products.
As per the draft law, there’ll be a board headed by the Fisheries and Livestock Minister as its chairman and a 19-member governing body will run the board, said the Cabinet Secretary.
The main functions of the board will be to provide suggestions and technical support over the rearing of domestic animals through scientific systems, medical services, and production and marketing of quality milk, he said.