Alive &Thrive) The government has submitted the draft amendment of the Law of Labor to the National Assembly Standing Committee this morning, in which a five month maternity leave policy is proposed for female workers in normal conditions and six months for female workers in heavy, toxic and dangerous conditions or handicapped ones.
As an explanation for the above proposal, the Director of the MOLISA, Ms. Pham Thi Hai Chuyen said that the government supports the idea of expanding maternity leave upto six months based on the principle of protecting female workers. However, there must be a clear roadmap for this expansion to ensure no barrier is created for female workers as they join the labor market and the affordability of the Social Insurance Fund must be taken into consideration. “For a mother working in normal conditions, five month maternity leave is enough to ensure her health”, said Ms. Chuyen.
Many women want to prolong maternity leave
Many representatives said that maternity leave should be expanded upto six months. Mr. Phan Trung Ly, the chairman of Law Committee, supports six month maternity leave after delivery. “Six month maternity leave used to be applied but there were some comments that it affected the Insurance Sector. However, if female workers want to take only two months or take longer leave to ensure good health, that should be taken into consideration”, he said.
The Chairman of the Financing and Budget Committee, Mr. Phung Quoc Hien said that we should not stipulate maternity leave as five or six months. “Female employees in my office face a lot of difficulty when returning to work after three to four months, I would like all of us to agree on six months”, Mr. Hien expressed.
However, some representatives expressed their concern about maternity leave expansion. Chairman of the Ethnic Minorities Council, Mr. Kso Phuoc said that when he visited garment factories, 90% of the workers were female, if one third took maternity leave, the enterprises would be affected. In addition maternity leave that is too long might also affect an unmarried girl in the recruitment process. Therefore, this issue should be taken into careful consideration. He also proposed the same policy to single fathers based on the idea of equality.
The chairman of the Committee of Economy, Mr. Nguyen Van Giau, said that all reports did not give any clear evidence on minimum and maximum leave to ensure the wellbeing of mothers and infants. Therefore, we could not confirm whether four or five months would be needed.
| Saturday, September 17th 2011, 11:11 GMT +7 |
| In your opinion, how long the maternity leave should be: |
| Four months | 4.1 % | 474 votes |
| Six months | 95.9% | 11,061 votes |
| Total: 11,535 votes |
For the Vietnamese version, see the link below (please note that the Vietnamese version includes an additional part about “over-time regulation”):