The payment of maternity leave in Albania remains among the lowest in the region, ranking after Serbia, North Macedonia and Montenegro, where the parent on maternity leave is paid the full net salary.
Experts suggest amending the law, so that parents can benefit from payment equivalent to the value of the full salary during maternity leave. They explain that a low payment worsens the situation in the family and creates inequality.
Here’s how a parent on maternity leave gets paid less
According to the law, in order to receive maternity leave, the woman must have worked and secured, in Albania, 12 calendar months with or without interruption in one or several work centers. During pregnancy, she must have worked for at least one week.
The father or the insured adopter also has the right to leave to take care of the child, if he does not exercise this right or there are no conditions for the mother to take advantage of it.
The Law on Social Security specifies that the parent on maternity leave will be paid 80% of the net salary for the first six months of the leave and 50% of the net salary for the second six months of the leave.
HOW IT IS CALCULATED?
Specifically, if we take into consideration the minimum salary (34,000 Lek ALL) before the law was changed, the parent with a declared salary of 34,000 Lek ALL received 80% of the gross salary, i.e. 27,200 Lek ALL for the first 6 months and 50% of the gross salary, i.e. 17,000 Lek ALL per month for the second 6 months, while after the change in the law, the same parent with the same salary of 34,000 Lek ALL receives 80% of the net salary, i.e. approximately 24,000 Lek ALL for the first 6 months after childbirth and 15,000 Lek ALL for the second 6 months after birth. So, the parent receives 3,200 Lek ALL less per month in the first 6 months and 2,000 Lek ALL less per month in the second 6 months.
Meanwhile, for the maximum salary of 150,000 Lek ALL, a parent receives 94,000 Lek ALL with the amended law in 2014, currently in force. Meanwhile, if the calculation were made on the basis of the gross salary, then a parent would benefit 120,000 Lek ALL.
Arbitrary law burdens women
From the data obtained from the Institute of Social Insurance, it results that for 2021, 18,139 birth permits were obtained from women and 769 from men, while births for this year are 27,211, so from the calculations it results that 8,303 families only for the year 2021 did not benefit from maternity leave.
Albania, among the last countries in the region
The countries of the region, such as Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, have the amount of benefit from maternity leave equal to 100% of the gross salary. Serbia is the country with the best conditions for the well-being of newborns, as the maternity leave benefit measure is 106% of the salary, according to a calculation made by Open Data.
