Member of Parliament Louis Ng says he is asking the government to consider increasing childcare leave benefits, especially for parents with multiple children.

Six days not enough?

In a Feb. 27 Facebook post titled "Time for more childcare leave", Ng wrote that the current six days of childcare leave and unpaid infant care leave was insufficient.

Explaining that it did not make sense that the leave entitlement did not increase as parents had more children, Ng, as a father of three, shared his own experience on the topic.

HFMD

Ng said that with Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease (HFMD) being more commonplace, six days of childcare leave may not be enough for parents who have to take time off to care for their children.

He shared his personal experience where all three of his children contracted HFMD consecutively, with one child out of school for two weeks.

He added that he was not sure if parents with two or more children would have enough annual leave, which they would have to eat into after using up their childcare leave entitlements.

He concluded his post calling for more leave to be given to parents on a per-child basis and also to allow parents to use their sick leave entitlements when their children fall sick.

Resonance

Ng's post resonated with Singaporeans who supported the move to give parents more childcare leave, accumulating more than 1,000 shares by Thursday afternoon.

Several gave their personal challenges with having six days of childcare leave:

At least two others highlighted another problem that had less to do with the number of days of leave granted to parents, but the attitude employers have towards workers going on leave:

Ng said he filed a Parliamentary question regarding childcare leave.

Here's his full post:

Top photo via Louis Ng's Facebook page