New law on maternity leave to encourage people to have more

With the new provision of maternity leave of 26 weeks after the birth of second child, people are being encouraged to have more children, BJD MP Tathagat Satpathy said today.
"A leave of 26 weeks is given after second child and third child. We are encouraging people to have more children and ensuring growth of population," he said while participating in a discussion on the third UN's Sustainable Development Goal relating to health.
He was referring to a recent passage of a bill under which the tenure of the maternity leave in the organised sector has been increased from 12 weeks to 26 weeks.

Satpathy said, after defeating former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1977, Raj Narain was made the Minister of Health and Family Planning. The name was later changed to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
Taking a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the Swachh Bharat Mission, the BJD MP said despite his popularity, the cleanliness drive has not picked up.
He was also critical of the Swachh Bharat cess levied by the Union government for collecting funds for the mission.

Satpathy also expressed concern over attacks on dcotors.
Initiating the discussion, BJP MP Anurag Thakur underlined the need for raising public expenditure on health.

He regretted that India ranked low on various health parameters and its expenditure on health was just 1.3 per cent of the GDP as against 3.1 per cent in China.
Thakur also made a case for promoting growth so that more funds could be made available for dealing with public health issues and praised the Prime Minister's Swachch Bharat mission saying it should get support from all political parties.
Before the discussion, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan spoke at length asking members to have a constructive discussion on the issue and introspect on the ways to deal with the issues which affect common people.

She said her endeavour would be to discuss at least one of the 17 UN's sustainable development goals.