The federal executive council, at its weekly meeting held at the Presidential Villa Abuja yesterday approved a 14-day paternity leave for men in the federal civil service to make them bond properly with their newborn babies or adopted ones.
Head of civil service of the federation, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, disclosed this while briefing journalists at the end of the meeting presided over by the vice president, Prof Yemi Osinbajo.
She explained that the leave is meant for male federal civil servants whose spouses or wives have given birth to a newborn baby or if the husband and wife have just adopted a baby of less than four months
“We’ve gotten approval to include paternity leave. This is something that is new. And this is something that the unions in the service asked that we include, and luckily, we’ve been able to include it,” she said.
“We’ve also been able to ensure that leave now is calculated based on working days, not on calendar days; that also has been approved.
“Paternity leave is the leave that is approved for men, when their spouses or wives have given birth to a newborn baby. Or if the husband and wife have just adopted a baby of less than four months, then the man is entitled to paternity leave of about 14 days.
“So, that is what has been approved for men so that the men and their babies also can bond well. It’s important because we want the young children and the youth to bond properly with their fathers, just as they bond well with their mothers.
“This is the first time that this has been approved — for men to form bonds at the early stages, especially at the early stages of a child’s life; that is when it’s very important for this bonding to take place,” she said.
The development comes months after the federal government approved paternity leave for staff of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
Meanwhile, a few states in the country — including Lagos and Enugu — have approved paternity leave for employees.
Yemi-Esan also announced that work was still ongoing on the removal of the dichotomy between the HND and first degree holders.
“We presented today (yesterday) the memo on the revised Public Service Rules (PSR). We are all aware that the PSR are all important tool in the public service. It is what governs the actions of public servants at work.
“The last time these rules were revised was in 2008. And so, we recognised that the revision was long overdue. And so we put everything that we got into it to ensure that we did the revision.
“These rules ideally are supposed to be revised every five years. But this has taken more than that for us to get the revised PSR 2021. In doing the revision, we had a lot of stakeholder engagements; we asked there was a circular that was put out for call from different sectors and from various groups that wanted amendments to the PSR.
“We set up different committees to look at what we got. And finally a technical committee that consisted of permanent secretaries serving and retired, and directors were put together to look at the zero draft that we got. After they reviewed it, we took it to the National Council on Establishment. At the National Council on Establishment, the essence of the PSR was approved. However, there were some revisions that were supposed to be made before making it public.
“Those revisions have been done. And so we brought it to the Federal Executive Council this morning for approval, and we got approval for it. Some of the revisions that we made, the first thing was that the 2008 version had 16 chapters; the 2021 version now has 17 chapters.
“The chapter on APER (annual performance evaluation review), and promotions have been replaced by a new chapter on the new performance management system that has been introduced into the public service. There is also a chapter that has also been reinvigorated in the chapter on training. This is an all important chapter because of the importance that training has in the public service,” she said.
