President of the Fathers’ Association of Trinidad and Tobago, Rhondall Feeles, has welcomed the government’s announcement to introduce paternity and parental leave.
He noted that this is a milestone the Association has been advocating for decades.
“We are elated. Even a glimmer of hope is enough for us. We have long championed legislation for paternity and parental rights, which, until now, have never been formally recognised for men. This announcement represents a major achievement for our association. After nearly two decades of persistent advocacy, it is encouraging to finally hear the government commit to legislating paternity leave.”
Mr. Feeles is now hopeful that the Fathers’ Association will be a part of the consultation process.
“I would have reached out to the Attorney General, and he would have responded, and he did indicate that he did highlight or he did make mention that they want us to be consulted when it comes to the drafting, and that is something that we intend to hold them to. We have had instances of fathers where the mother died giving birth and they couldn’t get leave to take care of their newborn babies. So we see this as great hope on the horizon, and we just want to be guaranteed that men get suitable time so that they are no longer seen as secondary parents. Many of them over the decades have lamented to the fact that they have always had to then look for vacation leave, look for no-pay leave, because they have never had satisfactory time when it comes to parental leave.”
He also pointed out the move speaks directly to gender equity within the workplace.
“For years men have also paid national insurance contributions and even though they’ve paid national insurance contributions, unlike their female counterparts, they’ve had horrible access, parental access, parental leave rather, to their children two to three days by a CPO directive. And that was only for permanent workers. Contract workers weren’t allowed to do it. So we are still hopeful and we are still praying that when we hear the time allotted to fathers when it comes to parental leave is that it will be equitable to that of their counterparts and their co-workers because they make the same financial contributions to national insurance.”
Mr. Feeles does not anticipate any pushback from employers.
“There are institutions now that realise, places, global institutions like Microsoft and these places, are going at eight weeks and going to twelve weeks because they understand that there is benefit when fathers are involved in the nurturing of their children: benefit to the child, benefit to the father and benefit also to the mother when they’re there to support them. So it’s about family building, and I think the world has realised that it is critical and important to have fathers included as opposed to excluded from the immediate postnatal stage of the birth of their children.”
The amendments will see the removal of the ruling limiting maternity benefits to once every 24 months. It will also see an introduction of paid breastfeeding breaks, stronger protections against workplace discrimination, a ban on pregnancy testing for job applicants and employees, and will extend full protections to contract workers and fast-track cases through the Industrial Court.