The new Social Insurance Law has many changes in maternity benefits.

According to the draft Law on Social Insurance, male employees who are paying social insurance when their wives give birth will be entitled to 5 working days of maternity leave from the first 30 days after their wives give birth. In the case of a wife who has to have a caesarean section, male employees will be entitled to 7 working days of maternity leave, excluding holidays, Tet holidays, and weekly days off.

(Illustration photo: Ha Thai/VNA)

This is one of many new points on maternity benefits in the draft Law on Social Insurance that the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs is submitting to the public for comments before submitting it to the National Assembly for approval.

In addition to the regulations on the time off men are allowed when their wives give birth, the draft also stipulates that in cases where only the father participates in social insurance and the mother gives birth, the father is entitled to a one-time allowance equal to 02 months of basic salary for each child.

According to the draft, during pregnancy, female workers are allowed to take five days off to go for prenatal check-ups, one day each time; in cases where the medical facility is far away or the pregnant woman has a medical condition or an abnormal pregnancy, she is allowed two days off for each prenatal check-up.

According to the Draft, in case of miscarriage, abortion, suction curettage or stillbirth, female employees are entitled to maternity leave as prescribed by a competent medical facility and up to ten days if the pregnancy is less than five weeks old; up to twenty days if the pregnancy is from five weeks old to less than thirteen weeks old; up to forty days if the pregnancy is from thirteen weeks old to less than twenty-five weeks old; up to fifty days if the pregnancy is twenty-five weeks old or older.

Article 32 of the Draft stipulates that female employees who give birth are entitled to 6 months of maternity leave before and after giving birth. In the case of female employees who give birth to twins or more, from the second child onwards, the mother is entitled to an additional 1 month of leave for each child. The maximum maternity leave before giving birth is 2 months.

In addition, female employees can return to work before the end of the 6-month maternity leave period when meeting the following conditions: After taking at least 4 months of maternity leave, there is confirmation from a medical facility that returning to work early is not harmful to the employee's health, must notify in advance and have the employer's consent. In particular, in addition to the salary for the working days, female employees who return to work before the end of their maternity leave period are still entitled to maternity benefits.

The issue of retirement age is also a content that has many options for comments in this draft.

The draft proposes two options for increasing the retirement age of workers in the coming time. According to option 1, from 2016 onwards, the retirement age of workers will increase by 1 year every 3 years until reaching 62 years old for both men and women.
Option 2 stipulates that from 2016 onwards, the retirement age requirement for employees will increase by 1 year every 3 years until reaching 60 years old for women and 62 years old for men.

In addition to the plan to increase the retirement age from 2016, the draft also proposes two more plans to delay the increase in retirement age: From 2020 onwards, the retirement age requirement for workers will increase by 1 year every 3 years until reaching 62 years old for both men and women, or from 2020 onwards, the retirement age requirement for workers will increase by 1 year every 3 years until reaching 60 years old for women and 62 years old for men.

Regarding the handling of violations of evasion or late payment of social insurance premiums by employees, in addition to having to pay the unpaid or late amount and being handled according to the provisions of law, the enterprise must also pay the interest on the unpaid or late amount at 3 times the interest rate of investment activities from the social insurance fund of the previous year or 2 times the interbank interest rate.

The draft Law on Social Insurance also provides new regulations on social insurance implementation procedures to solicit public opinion.

It is expected that the Social Insurance Law, if passed by the National Assembly, will take effect from January 1, 2015./.

According to Vietnam - LY