Federal Ombudsperson for Protection against Harassment Fauzia Waqar has stated that giving 30 days of paternity leave is compulsory at the birth of a child issuing a landmark judgment in favor of the right of fathers.
The decision was taken after the State Bank of Pakistan had refused to grant paternity leave to a bank officer Syed Basit Ali. Ombudsperson imposed a fine of Rs500000 on the State Bank for denial.
According to the order Rs400,000 from the fine will be handed over to the complainant Syed Basit Ali and the remaining Rs100,000 will be deposited in the national treasury.
The Ombudsperson also ordered the State Bank to give the officer 30 days of paternity leave with full pay and allowances. Furthermore the bank has been directed to establish a policy in accordance with Maternity and Paternity Leave Act 2023.
The ruling states that when paternity leave is denied, it is gender-based harassment and discrimination. It emphasised that maternity leave but paternity leave means discrimination on grounds of gender.
In that regard, the Ombudsperson found that childcare is not only the responsibility of women and that the denial of paternity leave goes against shared parental responsibility and for the child’s best interests.
The case was filed by an officer of a banking services corporation called the State Bank Banking Services Corporation against his employer after his demand for paternity leave was turned down on the ground that there was no relevant policy for such a demand.
Over 25 million Pakistani children remain out of school
The government’s education emergency policy comes under renewed scrutiny after a report by the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (I-SAPS) revealed that over 25 million children remain out of school in Pakistan, despite rising education expenditure across the board, the number of children out of school has continued to increase.
The latest I-SAPS report identifies serious structural flaws in the existing fabric of education that point out that education spending has been allowed to aggregate at about 500 Billion Rupees, yet the pressure has been shifted to common families.
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