Annual leave, maternity leave and sick leave in Ghana: what the Labour Act says

Most leave policies in Ghana are copied from an older company’s handbook, and some of them quietly break the law. The usual offenders are “unused leave is forfeited”, “you can sell back your leave” and “maternity leave counts as your annual leave for the year”.

This is what the Labour Act, 2003 (Act 651) actually requires. Your contracts and collective agreements can give staff more than this, but not less.

Annual leave

The minimum is 15 working days on full pay for each calendar year of continuous service (section 20). “Full pay” means the worker’s normal pay without overtime, including the cash value of any pay in kind.

A few rules sit around that entitlement:

• Seasonal work. If your work isn’t carried on all year, a worker who has worked at least 200 days in the year counts as having a year of continuous service (section 21).
• Public holidays and sickness don’t reduce it. Public holidays, certified sick leave, pregnancy and confinement don’t eat into annual leave (section 22). If a worker falls sick during their annual leave, and a doctor certifies it, those sick days don’t count as leave (section 24).
• Notice. Where possible, tell a worker the start date of their leave at least 30 days before it begins (section 27).
• Two parts. A worker may be allowed to take the leave in two roughly equal parts (section 28).
• Calling someone back. In an urgent case you can ask a worker to interrupt their leave, but they keep the rest of it, and you must cover the reasonable costs of the interruption (sections 25 and 26).
• Leaving the job. A worker whose employment ends is entitled to leave in proportion to their service in that calendar year (section 30), unless they were dismissed in a way that allowed dismissal without notice.

The rule most policies break

“Any agreement to relinquish the entitlement to annual leave or to forgo such leave is void.” (section 31)

You can’t agree with an employee that they will give up their leave, even if they want to. A policy that says unused leave simply disappears at year end sits badly with this rule. The safer approach is to plan leave across the year so people actually take it, and to agree a clear carry-forward rule for leave that couldn’t be taken.

Records you must keep

Section 27 requires every employer to keep a record of each worker’s employment date, their leave entitlement, the dates they took leave, and what they were paid for it. If the Labour Department asks, a spreadsheet nobody has updated since March won’t help you.

Maternity leave

Section 57 is short, and generous:

• A woman worker who produces a medical certificate showing her expected date of confinement is entitled to at least 12 weeks of maternity leave, in addition to any annual leave she is entitled to.
• She is entitled to her full pay and benefits during that leave.
• The leave can be extended by at least two weeks if the birth is abnormal or she has two or more babies.
• Illness caused by the pregnancy or the birth, certified by a doctor, gives her additional leave.
• A nursing mother may break for one hour during working hours to nurse her baby, and that hour is treated and paid as working time. “Nursing mother” covers a child of up to one year.
• You cannot dismiss a woman because she is absent on maternity leave.

So maternity leave is not a substitute for annual leave. An employee who takes 12 weeks of maternity leave still has her 15 days of annual leave for the year.

Sick leave

The Labour Act doesn’t set a fixed number of paid sick days. It protects workers in other ways (sick days during annual leave don’t count as leave, and certified sickness doesn’t reduce the annual entitlement), and leaves the number of paid sick days to your contracts, workplace rules or collective agreement.

That gap is exactly why you need a written sick leave policy. Decide how many days are paid, when a medical certificate is needed (many employers ask for one after two consecutive days), and what happens after the paid days run out.

What about paternity leave?

The current Act has no statutory paternity leave. Many employers in Ghana now give fathers a few days of paid leave around the birth through their own policy. If you offer it, write it down so every manager applies it the same way.

A quick policy checklist

1. At least 15 working days of annual leave, on full pay.
2. A carry-forward rule instead of “use it or lose it”.
3. At least 12 weeks of fully paid maternity leave on top of annual leave, plus two more weeks for complicated or multiple births.
4. Paid nursing breaks of an hour a day for the first year.
5. A written sick leave policy with clear certificate rules.
6. Proper leave records for every worker.

How Eban handles leave

In Eban you set up each leave type (annual, maternity, sick, study, compassionate and so on) with its own entitlement and rules, and Eban keeps every employee’s balance up to date. A leave type can carry unused days into the next year, with a cap and a month by which they must be used, which is a cleaner answer to section 31 than “use it or lose it”. Public holidays are left out when Eban counts leave days.

Employees apply from the mobile app, approvals go to the right supervisor, and everyone can see who is away. If you have to call someone back early, a recall ends the leave from their return date and gives the unused days back. And because approved leave is part of the attendance record, staff on leave are never marked absent, and the records the Labour Act asks for are always there.