Education Ministry announces closure of schools for Election Day

The Education Ministry has announced the decision to close public schools on March 2, 2020, in order to facilitate the usage of those public buildings as polling places for the General and Regional Elections.
This was communicated by the Ministry in a Public Service Announcement. It was explained that approval was granted for all public schools to be closed. This, it noted, would facilitate the “smooth operations of General and Regional Elections”.
There has been much talk about polling places in recent days, with the Guyana Elections Commission announcing only days ago it would be slashing the number of polling places. Meanwhile, according to the Ministry in its PSA, however, “permission is granted for the use of public schools as polling places on the said date”.
With the announcement, some concern was expressed whether the day would be made a general public holiday to facilitate working adults going to vote. Efforts by this publication to make contact with the relevant authorities to clarify this proved futile.
In 2018, the Opposition People’s Progressive Party had called for Local Government Elections (LGE) to be a holiday. In a statement at the time, they had said that “The PPP/C recalls that recent election days have been invariably declared a national holiday in order to facilitate electors across the political spectrum to vote. The PPP/C recalls that it was the APNU/AFC that was pushing aggressively for Local Government Elections claiming that people were anxious and excited about being empowered to direct their local officers”.