Maternity Benefit Payments Payment window is 48 hours??

Sir/Ma'am

1. As per section 6(5) of Maternity Benefits Law, we need to pay the amount of maternity benefits within 48 hours of production of Birth Certificate. Is this true? I checked with some colleagues in fairly mid-sized companies and their company is sending the maternity benefits every month like regular salary.


2. Our organization has less than 10 employees and we are a company. Can we reject the maternity benefits claim?


Regards
N Pasha

Adding another question for respected members

1. What would be the medical bonus in Bangalore? I see in the Act it is INR 1,000, but in other articles somewhere it is INR 3500 and some places as high as INR 25000.

Further, do we need to pay this when we have taken health insurance for her and maternity expenses are covered in the insurance?

[8. Payment of medical bonus.— (1) Every woman entitled to maternity benefit under this Act shall
shall also be entitled to receive from her employer a medical bonus of one thousand rupees, if no pre-natal
confinement and post-natal care is provided for by the employer free of charge.

The maternity benefits involve tow monetary things. One is payment of salary for 26 weeks. Second payment of Rs 3500 ( it not 1000 or 25000 but it is Rs 3500) as medical bonus. You can mark the woman employee availing maternity leave as "leave" and pay her salary every month as if she is on leave. This will satisfy the provisions of the Law. Similarly, payment of medical bonus is to be made and this is a one time payment (not payable every month) provided you are not giving any natal care to the employee. Obviously, if you send some nurse or ayah to her house to take care of her then this payment need not be made. Naturally, you cannot offer any natal care for six months at a cost of Rs 3500!! Hence pay it.

Another important matter is the applicability of Maternity Benefits Act to your establishment. If yours is a factory or mine then it is applicable to you even if the number of employee is less than 10 but if your establishment is not a factory or mine, then there should be a minimum of ten persons for coverage. This ten persons shall include all employees including those on contract and casually engaged. For applicability of any Labour law the constitution of the establishment, ie, whether it is a proprietary firm, partnership firm or a company, is immaterial. laws become applicable depending upon the nature of activity, whether engaged in manufacturing, mining, plantation, trade and commerce, and the number of employees engaged.

Thanks Madhu!!

Follow up question - "You can mark the woman employee availing maternity leave as "leave" and pay her salary every month as if she is on leave. This will satisfy the provisions of the Law"

As per section 6(5) of the maternity benefits law - the prenatal portion of the leave is required to be paid in advance on production of proof of EDD. Whereas post-natal leave portion is to be paid in 48 Hours on production of certificate of birth.

By paying salary every month and not paying in advance or 48 hours' time as the case may be - are not we violating the provisions of the law. ?


Thanks
PKAssoc

payment of advance salary and full salary within 48 hours of child birth is not practical especially when the maternity leave was extended to 26 weeks from 12 weeks. Therefore, monthly payment would satisfy the legal requirements.

Hi Madhu

We even have a case where a candidate has asked for the maternity leave immediately on the first day of joining.
we could not do anything about it as we did not know that she was pregnant at the time of interview as it was an online interview. How to handle such a case?

She served exactly 80 days and now going on a mat leave of 6 months. We are certain that she would never come back.

Kindly let us know how we can avoid such cases where candidates are misusing such laws to benefit themselves?|

Genuine mat leaves are fine but cases like these are rampant these days. We encourage genuine mat leaves but planning to join a company when a candidate is 6 months pregnant and then serving 80 days and then never returning back.

Members, has anyone gone through this kind of a case?

Hi

When a Lady attend interview with 6 months pregnancy the interviewing authority should have noticed it and should have checked it. If it is online interview, interviewer can ask in direct questions to ascertain. though such personal questions are not right and banned in western questions.

In the application for employment form you can add a question for female employees after marital status question add a question " if married are you on family way".

In worst cases there is no other except to accept and allow them to proceed on maternity leave. After all out of total employee strength may be 1-3 will be on maternity leave right or more than it?

You have two choices, one to deny maternity leave saying that your establishment not covered by the Maternity Benefits Act and hen second the leave is admissible to women employees who have worked for 80 days during 12 months preceding the expected day of delivery. The legality of '12 months' preceding the date of delivery is left to you. The same was discussed in this forum at various times and I have not received any clarification for that. Anyway, this is a case of cheating and the lady should not take advantage of an online interview. But I don't understand a]why should a small organisation like yours which employs less than 10 employees should go for an online interview!!

Thanks Lakhsmi and Madhu.


Madhu: why should a small organization like yours which employs less than 10 employees should go for an online interview!!

we are hiring and we plan to reach 100 emps at the end of the year. Most of the interviews these days are conducted online as that's the norm and the preference, most female employees also prefer working from home. online interviews are kept in their interests to benefit them.

Madhu Ji - Are there any ways to plug this loophole. Since it has happened once, chances are there it can happen again. We certainly want to pay genuine MAT Benefits, but we want to avoid cases where someone joins the company in their 6 months, completes exactly 80 days and then says we want to go on a 6-month MAT leave never to return.