Paternity leave in Morocco..Social effects and reinforcement of family bonding

Four years ago, Ismail El-Saadawi, son of the city of Casablanca, in central Morocco, gave birth to his firstborn, and he still remembers how he found it very difficult at that time to reconcile his work with his wife’s participation in the responsibilities of caring for the newborn and the requirements that accompanied the happy event, as he only benefited from a vacation that did not exceed 3 days, according to the Moroccan labor law.

Ismail told Sky News Arabia: “I had to take an extra week from my annual vacation so that I could spend more time with my wife and child, after we had a new baby.”

Ismail believes that three days remain an insufficient period, given the required transfers between the hospital and home, and carrying out the administrative procedures associated with the new situation, in addition to preparing for the celebration of the newborn.

Ismail is only one case among other cases that finds it difficult to reconcile between her roles and responsibilities within the family and her professional life whenever she gives birth to a new baby. Personnel from three to fifteen days.

Early this week, the House of Representatives (the first chamber of the Moroccan Parliament) unanimously approved a bill that extends paternity leave for employees who have had a child or who have been entrusted with sponsorship to 15 days with pay.
Parental Leave Extension Act

The new law stipulates that a man who has given birth to a child or who is sponsoring a child under 24 months of age is granted a paternity leave of 15 days.

The employee benefits from this holiday after submitting a request during the period extending from the date of the birth of the child or the assignment of sponsorship until the newborn or his sponsored reaches 14 weeks.

According to the draft law, a woman employed in the public sector who has been assigned to sponsor a child under 24 months of age will also benefit from a paid vacation of fourteen weeks.

The law enables the employee to have a license to breastfeed for one hour per day, from the date of exhaustion of the license granted for childbirth or sponsorship, and until the child reaches the age of twenty-four days.

The draft law falls within the framework of seeking to promote the rights of employees, men and women, and to enable them to reconcile their professional and private lives, as well as in line with the principle of shared responsibility in family life.

legal gain

Before referring the law to Parliament, the Moroccan government ratified it last May, in implementation of the April 30 agreement with trade unions, regarding raising the number of parental leave days for employees in the public sector to fifteen days.

For his part, Mohamed Boutayeb, a member of the National Bureau of the Trade Union Federation of Employees affiliated with the Moroccan Labor Confederation, valued this step, and considered it a gain for employees in the public sector, and a quick interaction by the Moroccan Parliament with the draft law submitted by the government, which comes in implementation of one of the obligations Agreement of April 30, 2022.
Boutayeb added, in a statement to “Sky News Arabia”, that the application of this law would contribute to breaking the concept of the stereotypical distribution of tasks within Moroccan families, and recognizing the responsibility of male employees to take care of their children at birth.

Boutayeb continued, explaining that this initiative enabled Morocco to be in the list of the few countries that grant paternity leave in the world.

Boutayeb called for this procedure to be generalized to employees working in the private sector and not to be limited to the public sector only, given its importance in establishing basic values ​​within the Moroccan family.