It's all set to be put in black and white. Yes, the 26-week maternity leave will be a reality soon. All government and private sector companies would soon have 26-weeks maternity leaves for pregnant women, say news reports.
Hope this move helps the new mothers balance their professional commitments with personal lives, which is the root cause of mothers leaving their jobs post delivery.
After year-long deliberations started by Maneka Gandhi, the Centre has begun the process of fixing maternity leave to 26 weeks—six-and-a-half months—across all sectors. This is more than double the leave mothers get in the private sector: 12 weeks or three months. However, maternity leave for government workers is already six months.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley and his group of ministers gave the green signal to the labour ministry’s proposal to increase maternity leave for working women on Wednesday, June 29.
“We will now move the cabinet to get the proposal to amend the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 cleared,” said a senior labour ministry official.
Women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi even met labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya on Wednesday in the hope of expediting the process.
Interestingly, if the proposal is cleared by the Union cabinet, India will become one of 40 countries where maternity leave benefits span more than 18 weeks.
The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Maternity Protection Convention mandates a minimum 14 weeks of maternity benefit to women but recommends that countries should increase it to 18 weeks.
Recent statistics by ILO also showed that Indian women were leaving the workplace at a rate faster than anywhere in the world. Experts said paltry maternity leave and consequent pressure to return to the workplace was one of the reasons new mothers were forced to quit.
Gandhi wrote to Dattatreya last year, proposing the maternity leave currently granted to working women should be increased to eight months, so as to enable mothers to take better care of their newborns. However, the proposal was rejected.
The seventh pay panel rejected the demand to increase both the maternity and paternity leave granted to government employees.
This news story first appeared here.
Also Read: 5 challenges Indian working mothers face every day
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