Maternal Insurance

Many countries help women in employment by providing them with a maternity benefit to enable them to take leave from work following the birth of a child. There are three financing mechanisms for the provision of maternity payments: government assumes responsibility; the employer assumes responsibility; or, the employee assumes responsibility – jointly with the employer – by accessing maternity insurance.

The Government will integrate a mechanism for providing all new mothers with maternity insurance within a new National Social Insurance Scheme (NSIS), which is described further in Section 4.3.3. The parameters of this mechanism will be established during the design of the NSIS but the Government will aim to provide all members with maternity payments of six months. As part of good practice, all members – male and female – will be obligated to pay the maternity insurance contribution since, if the burden for payment is placed on only women, this would increase the costs of female labour and discourage employers from contracting women. Payments will be shared by employees and employers. It is expected that the scheme will be functional by July 2016.