LETTER | With regards to the issue of the proposed 90-day maternity leave as per the Budget 2020 speech, I would like to propose that the federal government consider ways to socialise the implementation of this extended maternity leave to cushion its impact on employers. One way is to expand Socso coverage to cover maternity leave.

I am in full agreement that women should be given this 90-day maternity leave. In fact, fathers should also be given paternity leave as well and this would bode well for family development.

But we should also realise that unlike 50 years ago when most employment was done via government and large corporations, these days small and micro- businesses, self-employment and the gig economy workers make up a sizeable portion of our workforce.

For the small and micro-businesses, they may only be hiring less than 30 workers (the Malaysian definition of small and micro-enterprises) and many of these companies may be just hiring two or three employees. 

Many of these smaller employers will have a harder task to financially pay for maternity leave, especially an extended one. This is not to say that maternity leave should not be granted, but instead, a better system is needed to pay for it.

This will also overcome the possibility of social bias against women that may (but should not) arise when small and micro-businesses make hiring decisions.

When employers were mostly large corporations easily having a few hundred or a few thousand employees, employers would be able to handle this matter in- house. The same way the government as the largest employer in the country copes with maternity leave.

However, with the changing face of employment in the 21st century, we must solve the challenge with a different system that achieves our social objective whilst being financially fair on society. 

Maternity leave is a social goal and benefits society and country (not specific businesses) and thus socialising its cost should be the way forward.

The writer is DAP state assemblyperson for Bukit Gasing, Selangor.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.