Friday July 28, 2006
Maternity leave may be raised to 84 days
KUALA LUMPUR: The signs are there that women in the civil service will soon enjoy an 84-day maternity leave.
Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil said the Cabinet committee on Gender Equality, chaired by the Prime Minister, had responded positively to the proposal.
“The Prime Minister has been very forthcoming and we hope to make the announcement within a month,” she said yesterday.
Currently women enjoy a 60-day maternity leave.
Shahrizat said the ministry had pushed for longer maternity leave because most women were working these days and needed time to recover after their delivery.
She added that more time off work would also allow for stronger bonding between mother and child.
She pointed out that 47% of the workforce today comprised women and that if their needs to work in a comfortable environment were not met, there could be a “female retreat” in employment.
She also said 83% of the countries in the world gave working women 12 weeks of maternity leave or more.
As for increasing the seven-day paternity leave, Shahrizat said the ministry would push for this later.
She also announced the setting-up of three committees – one chaired by the Attorney-General, another by the Home Ministry, and the other by the Human Resources Ministry – to look into laws and provisions that might be gender-discriminatory.
These include sections on immigration law and differences in retirement age between men and women.
She said the government sector had standardised 56 as the retirement age for both male and female workers, but that the private sector was slow to follow suit.
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