LIC revises rule to increase maternity leave to 15 months

LIC has revised the rule in order to provide its female employees maternity leave of 15 months during their service period. According to the revised rules for maternity leaves notified by the Finance Ministry, an employee will get a maximum of 15 months of maternity leave during her service period. The norms cover employees of Class-I officers, Development Officers and Class III/IV and have come into effect from May 31, 2019. As per the notification, the maternity leave may be approved for a period which may extend up to six months at a stretch, subject to a maximum of 15 months during the entire period of the employee’s service. The leave will be for six months at a stretch each for the first and the second child, but three months for the third child. The two conditions have also been specified by the revised rule, firstly, the leave may be granted once during the service to a childless female officer for adopting a child, who is below the age of one year, through a proper legal process and on submission of a certified copy of the adoption to the corporation. The maximum period of leave shall be 12 weeks or till the child attains the age of one, whichever is earlier. The second condition provides for granting of a maximum of 12 weeks of leave, once during the service, to a childless ‘commissioning mother’ (a biological mother who uses her egg to create an embryo implanted in another woman) from the date of birth of the child. This leave may be used for one child till the child turns one year. These new norms are on the basis on the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act 2017. The Act provided increasing the maximum period of maternity benefit from the existing 12 weeks to 26 weeks, in case of women who have less than two surviving children; in other cases, the existing period of 12 weeks’ maternity benefit will continue. It talked about extending the maternity benefits to ‘commissioning’ and adopting mothers, and they will be entitled to 12 weeks’ maternity benefit from the date the child is handed over. The Act also has an enabling provision to facilitate work-from-home for mothers. There is also a provision to make it mandatory for establishments with 50 or more employees, to have a crèche either individually or as a shared common facility within such distance as may be prescribed by rules and also to allow mothers four visits to the crèche, including the interval for rest allowed to them.