Fiji Former Vice-President Calls For New Public Holiday

Sources: The Fiji Times and Fiji public holidays. Former Vice-President, Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, has called for the creation of new a public holiday to commemorate the arrival of the Girmitiyas from India 128 years ago.

Analysis: The creation of this new public holiday, to mark the arrival of the first East Indian migrants, if it came to pass would be in line with the similar public holidays already established in Guyana (May 5) and in Trinidad and Tobago (May 30), but it would be the first such declared public holiday in the Pacific. No specific date has yet been proposed for such a new public holiday in Fiji, but May 14, the anniversary of the 1879 landing of the first indentured servants at Levuka would seem fitting.