Is It Fair for HR to Count a National Holiday as Part of My Leave Days?

Dear Sir,

I took leave from 24 January 2017 to 27 January 2017. Since 26 January 2017 is a declared National holiday, I applied for only 3 days of leave, whereas HR is considering it as 4 days of leave because I took leave before and after 26 January 2017.

Is this practice correct? I understand if it was done for leave taken from Saturday to Monday, where they consider Sunday as leave as well, but is it applicable for declared holidays like National Festive Holidays (NFH)?

Please enlighten.

National and Festival Holiday Leave Policy

As per the NFH Act, Section 5, Subsection 3(ii), all national holidays are to be paid, and no suffix or prefix is admissible for casual, sick leave, or in-between leave during the national holiday. Therefore, in your case, the holiday on 26th January is to be paid.

For festival holidays, the employee should have worked for a minimum of 30 days in the immediately preceding 90 days of such festival holiday. To sum up, if an employee is on leave either before or after a national holiday or on leave on both ends of a national holiday, the holiday has to be paid since they are in service on the National Holiday.

Whereas immediately before the festival holiday, the employee should have worked for 30 days in total during the 90-day period (i.e., 1/3rd attendance, including weekly holidays, other allowed holidays, and permitted leave).

I hope this clarifies the holiday payment policy in relation to leave surrounding national and festival holidays.

Best regards.

Any holiday falling between the start and end date of the leave is considered as part of the leave period, to the best of my understanding.