Data Collection for Usage Rates of Government-Paid Childcare Leave

Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang asked the Minister for Social and Family Development whether the Ministry can start collecting data on both the usage rates of Government-Paid Childcare Leave (GPCL) for working mothers and fathers respectively and the number of children the employee has.

Under the Government-Paid Child Care Leave (GPCL) scheme, employers pay for the first three days of leave taken by their employees, while the Government reimburses employers for the fourth to the sixth day of leave taken. We therefore track take-up of the scheme by the number of people who take four or more days of leave. This is to strike a balance between collecting data for analysis, and avoiding excessive burden on employees and employers to submit more data than is necessary to qualify for childcare leave.

As employers only claim reimbursement from the Government for employees who take four or more days of leave, we do not require them to submit information for employees who only take one to three days.

We also do not require employers to track the number of children that employees taking childcare leave have, as employees are eligible for childcare leave as long as they have at least one citizen child under the age of seven years old.

As further data analysis would better help us understand the needs of working parents, we are continuing to refine our methods to gather more accurate and complete data for policy purposes, including matching data-sets across agencies, and surveying parents to better understand their use of childcare leave. We seek to do so without burdening employers and employees with excessive data submission.