People often asked me, especially after I posted this on social media, that how could I able to get a long maternity leave? I was quite surprise that not many people is aware with the existence of sabbatical leave.
According to the employment regulation, sabbatical leave or long leave is a fully paid leave that employee could take after 6 years of consecutive work period. Yes, it is stated in the regulation. Read here a very useful article about the regulation.
However, there’s a catch. The company that must comply with this provision is only the company that has already implemented such policy when the relevant Ministry of Manpower regulation was issued (i.e. 2004). This means that if a company has not yet implemented this policy as of 2004, then they are not obliged to have this type of leave for its employee.
For those government officials who are domiciled in Aceh, they are even more luckier. This is because the Aceh Governor just recently issued a new regulation on 6 months maternity leave for female government officials which aim to enable them to provide exclusive breastfeeding for their newborn. Awesome!
There were some controversy around the Aceh regulation, but in developed countries, this type of “extended leave” are super common and considered as basic human rights. Of course, things are depends on the condition of the work provider, and I am very lucky that my office has this sabbatical policy and my bosses allowed me to take the 6 months off (God bless them). I hope one day, other region in Indonesia as well as private sectors would implement and support the 6 months paid maternity leave too just like Aceh.
Amen.
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