Amendment proposed to grant 20 days of annual leave for employees with under 10 years of service

An amendment has been proposed to the Employment Act to reduce the current annual leave of 30 days to 20 days for employees with under 10 years of service.

The amendment proposed to Article 39 of the Employment Act by Maavashu MP Abdul Azeez Jamaal Aboobakuru states that an employee may be granted 20 days of annual leave for the first 5 consecutive years of service, an annual leave of 25 days for employees serving between 5 and 10 years, an annual leave of 30 days for employees with more than 10 years of service, and an annual leave of 35 days for employees with more than 20 years of service.

Article 39 of the Employment Act currently states that all employees with 1 year of service are entitled to 30 days of annual leave.

The amendment bill proposes Article 41 (a) of the Employment Act to be changed to allow that, if an employee was unable to go for annual leave or chose to differ the annual leave, the bulk leave of aggregate including previous year's annual leave maybe granted to the employee. It also limits the maximum period of accumulation of annual leave to two consecutive years.

The amendment also proposes to increase the maximum amounts of sick leave days to 35 days per year. The law currently grants 30 days per year.