Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to in­crease the ma­ter­ni­ty leave ben­e­fit from 13 weeks to 14 weeks with­in com­ing weeks. Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod said yes­ter­day that Gov­ern­ment would bring leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment with­in a week to do this and to amend the Mas­ter and Ser­vants Or­di­nance. The lat­ter is af­fil­i­at­ed with ma­ter­ni­ty leave leg­is­la­tion. McLeod al­so sig­nalled in­ter­est in push­ing for greater pa­ter­ni­ty leave for males. He said he had pur­sued pa­ter­ni­ty leave for be­tween three to five days in his pre­vi­ous in­car­na­tion.

He added: "It's all a work in progress. I look for­ward to bring­ing to Par­lia­ment one of these days, pro­vi­sions that would en­cour­age the males in our so­ci­ety," McLeod added.

McLeod said Cab­i­net agreed to ex­tend the ma­ter­ni­ty leave ben­e­fit to ful­fill one of its promis­es from the PP's Fyz­abad Ac­cord of 2012 and its elec­tion man­i­festo. He said work on the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance leg­is­la­tion would have to be amend­ed to fa­cil­i­tate the change to the ma­ter­ni­ty ben­e­fit. On the cost of the mea­sure, McLeod said this would re­late to the wage or salary of the re­spec­tive per­son ac­cess­ing the ben­e­fit. The cost would be re­vealed in the amend­ment to the NIS leg­is­la­tion, he pro­ject­ed. On the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty's pos­si­ble view of fur­ther ma­ter­ni­ty leave for women-and its pos­si­ble con­se­quences-McLeod said Gov­ern­ment had held con­sul­ta­tions with all stake­hold­er part­ners in­clud­ing busi­ness on the is­sue and they had agreed.