Ask three women in three different Pakistani workplaces how much maternity leave they are entitled to and you will get three different answers, all of them possibly correct. There is no single national maternity law. There is a federal statute, a set of provincial statutes, a social security scheme, and separate rules for government servants, and which one governs you depends on who your employer is and where you work.
Work out which law applies to you first
- Federal government employees, and employees in the Islamabad Capital Territory — the Maternity and Paternity Leave Act, 2020.
- Civil servants — the leave rules applicable to their service, which provide maternity leave separately from ordinary leave.
- Private-sector employees in a province — the provincial maternity benefit legislation. The Maternity Benefit Ordinance, 1958 is the historical baseline that the provinces inherited after the Eighteenth Amendment; Sindh has since replaced it with its own more generous statute, and the other provinces have each legislated or amended in their own way.
- Employees registered under social security — the provincial Employees' Social Security scheme pays a cash maternity benefit and provides medical care, in addition to whatever leave the employer owes.
This is why the first question is never “how much leave do I get”. It is “which statute covers my employer”.
What the 2020 Act gives
The Maternity and Paternity Leave Act, 2020 is the most generous of the schemes and the clearest to state. Maternity leave runs on a sliding scale by birth — the longest period for the first child, reducing for the second and third — and it is fully paid and does not come out of the employee's ordinary leave. The Act also introduced paternity leave, paid, for a father on the birth of a child, which was the first statutory paternity entitlement in Pakistan.
Employees who fall outside it — which is most of the private sector in the provinces — should look to their provincial statute, where the traditional entitlement has been twelve weeks, ordinarily split around the expected date of delivery, subject to a minimum period of service with the employer before the benefit is claimable.
The protections that matter more than the number of weeks
Across these statutes, three protections recur, and they are the ones women most often do not know they have:
- Pay during leave. Maternity leave is paid leave, not unpaid absence, and it is not to be set off against annual or casual leave.
- Protection against dismissal. An employer may not dismiss a woman during her maternity leave, or on account of her pregnancy or her having taken the leave. A termination timed around a pregnancy is exactly the kind of case a labour court is equipped to deal with.
- No loss of position or seniority. Returning from maternity leave means returning to your job, not to a lesser one invented while you were away.
Where the workplace is covered by social security, the employee is also entitled to medical care through the social security institution and to the maternity cash benefit — and the employer's obligation to register eligible employees is the employer's, not the employee's. Non-registration is the employer's default, and it does not extinguish the entitlement.
How to claim it without a fight
- Find your governing law and your employment terms. Read your appointment letter, your contract and the staff handbook, and identify which statute your employer falls under. Where the contract gives more than the statute, the contract wins; the statute is a floor, not a ceiling.
- Give written notice. Apply in writing, well before the expected date, and attach the medical certificate. Keep a copy with an acknowledgement or send it by email so the date of the application is provable.
- State the period precisely — start date, end date, date of return — and ask for written confirmation. Verbal approvals disappear when the manager changes.
- If your workplace is under social security, file the maternity benefit claim with the institution as well, not only with the employer.
- Keep every document. Application, medical certificates, approval, salary slips for the leave period. A claim later stands or falls on these.
If it is refused
- Put the refusal in writing. Ask, in an email, for the reason and the provision relied on. Employers who are wrong rarely put it in writing, and their silence is itself useful.
- Use the internal grievance procedure first, in writing. Most statutory schemes expect a grievance to have been raised with the employer before a court is approached.
- Escalate to the labour authorities. A grievance petition to the Labour Court under the applicable industrial relations legislation is the standard route for a private-sector employee. The Labour Department and its inspectorate can also be approached, and where social security is involved, the social security institution has its own machinery.
- Government servants use their own departmental appeal route and, where applicable, the service tribunal.
- Where refusal is combined with harassment or a forced resignation, that is a separate wrong with its own forum — the Ombudsperson under the workplace harassment legislation — and the two can be pursued together.
Move quickly. Employment claims carry short limitation periods, and a grievance raised months after the event loses much of its force even when the underlying entitlement is clear.
This article describes the general framework of maternity and paternity entitlements in Pakistan and is not advice on any particular employment. The exact period of leave, the qualifying service and the forum for a complaint depend on which federal or provincial statute covers your employer and on the terms of your own contract. Consult an employment law advocate before resigning or accepting a refusal.