Firstly, I like to quote a saying from John Stuart Mill;
“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.”
Nowadays, with the advent of new superb ICT gadgets and new discoveries in science, the present principle of knowledge and way of thinking need to be dynamic. Personally, I believe there are pro and con to this new development. The good part of new technology is that it helps to resolve certain technically problems and save a lot of time in doing things. But the bad part is that it inflicts a hidden cost and unforeseen implications to the society and nature.
So, a person being conservative per se is not really stupid for not accepting a change, but he or she may be being paranoid about change itself. This is quite common among the older generations, but not all of them are like that.
Speaking of change, we all can talk about changing our lives, our community and so on. And speaking about change in employment laws in Malaysia, I got interested with the headline in The Star published on 20 May 2010. It was about “90Days Maternity Leave”...
To some people, they might say, “What’s the big deal about it...?” I guess and I bet that group of people are still single. They are forgiven anyway because they have yet to embrace parenthood. However, I’m sure that all working parents would want the issue to be highlighted and discussed by the relevant ministries, namely the Human Resource Ministry and Women, Family & Community Development Ministry.
NUBE (National Union of Bank Employee) have being going all out on a “signature campaign” to get support from general public on the 90Days Maternity Leave. The move was motivated to amend the current Employment laws and to include additional maternity protection. Currently, Kelantan State government has shown a concrete support to the campaign and it was announced that women civil servant in the State would enjoy the 90 days entitlement starting next year.
Back then sometime in March 2009, Selangor State under the helm of Chief Minister Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim of PKR had announced that the 90days entitlement takes effect in the same year, and in addition the husband also enjoys a 14 days paternity leave.
Looking back in May 2007, when the issue was first raised by Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil (Minister of Women, Family & Community Development Ministry), who earlier proposed 84 days maternity leave to the Cabinet for approval but was rejected. There was a debate and concerns raised by the employer, particularly MEF (Malaysian Employer Federation) who argued that the long leave would negatively affect industrial productivity.
Personally, I would tend to look outside the box in order to get a more holistic view on the effect of a longer maternity leave. Of course there are always two side of the coin that the society has to deal with it – it either getting a healthy child growth or company’s wealth growth? Any nation would not want to sacrifice too much on either side. So it has to be balanced.
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