Employment Act 1968 · 2020 Revised Edition · Part 10 · Holiday, Annual Leave and Sick Leave Entitlements
88A. Annual leave
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An employee with at least 3 months of service gets 7 days of paid annual leave for the first 12 months. Leave rises by one day for each further 12 months, up to 14 days. An employee absent without permission on more than 20% of working days loses the leave.
Summary · Drafted with AI, checked against the official text on 30 Sep 2026.
Last amended by an amending law of 2018.
An employee who has served an employer for a period of not less than 3 months is, in addition to the rest days, holidays and sick leave to which the employee is entitled under sections 36, 88 and 89, respectively, entitled to the following:
employee
“employee” means a person who has entered into or works under a contract of service with an employer and includes a workman, and any officer or employee of the Government included in a category, class or description of such officers or employees declared by the President to be employees for the purposes of this Act or any provision thereof, but does not include any of the following:(a)any seafarer;(b)any domestic worker;(c) (d)any person belonging to any other class of persons whom the Minister may, by notification in the Gazette, declare not to be employees for the purposes of this Act;
7 days of paid annual leave, for the first 12 months of continuous service with the same employer;
subject to paragraph (c), an additional one day of paid annual leave, for every subsequent 12 months of continuous service with the same employer;
a maximum of 14 days of paid annual leave.
An employee who has served an employer for a period of not less than 3 months, but has not completed 12 months of continuous service in any year, is entitled to annual leave in proportion to the number of completed months of service in that year.
employer
“employer” means any person who employs another person under a contract of service and includes —(a)the Government in respect of such categories, classes or descriptions of officers or employees of the Government as are declared by the President to be employees for the purposes of this Act;(b)any statutory authority;(c)the duly authorised agent or manager of the employer; and(d)the person who owns or is carrying on or for the time being responsible for the management of the profession, business, trade or work in which the employee is engaged;
In calculating the proportionate annual leave under subsection (2) —
any fraction of a day that is less than one‑half of a day must be disregarded; and
where a fraction of a day is one-half or more, it must be regarded as one day.
Where an employee is granted leave of absence without pay by an employer at the employee’s request, the period of the leave is to be disregarded for the purpose of computing the period of continuous service under this section.
An employee forfeits the employee’s entitlement to annual leave if the employee absents himself or herself from work without the employer’s permission, or without reasonable excuse, for more than 20% of the working days in the months or year (as the case may be) in which the employee’s entitlement to annual leave accrues.
In the case of an employee to whom Part 4 applies by virtue of section 35(b) or who is a workman mentioned in section 35(a) —
workman
“workman” means —(a)any person, skilled or unskilled, who has entered into a contract of service with an employer pursuant to which he or she is engaged in manual labour, including any artisan or apprentice, but excluding any seafarer or domestic worker;(b)any person, other than clerical staff, employed in the operation or maintenance of mechanically‑propelled vehicles used for the transport of passengers for hire or for commercial purposes;(c)any person employed partly for manual labour and partly for the purpose of supervising in person any workman in and throughout the performance of his or her work:Provided that when any person is employed by any one employer partly as a workman and partly in some other capacity or capacities, that person is deemed to be a workman unless it can be established that the time during which that workman has been required to work as a workman in any one salary period as defined in Part 3 has on no occasion amounted to or exceeded one‑half of the total time during which that person has been required to work in such salary period;(d)any person specified in the First Schedule; or(e)any person whom the Minister may, by notification in the Gazette, declare to be a workman for the purposes of this Act.
the employer must grant, and the employee must take, the employee’s paid annual leave not later than 12 months after the end of every 12 months of continuous service; and
if the employee fails to take that leave by the end of that period, the employee ceases to be entitled to that leave.
An employer must pay an employee the employee’s gross rate of pay for every day of paid annual leave.
gross rate of pay
“gross rate of pay” means the total amount of money including allowances to which an employee is entitled under his or her contract of service either for working for a period of time, that is, for one hour, one day, one week, one month or for such other period as may be stated or implied in his or her contract of service, or for each completed piece or task of work but does not include —(a)additional payments by way of overtime payments;(b)additional payments by way of bonus payments or annual wage supplements;(c)any sum paid to the employee to reimburse him or her for special expenses incurred by him or her in the course of his or her employment;(d)productivity incentive payments; and(e)travelling, food or housing allowances;
If an employee is dismissed on any ground other than misconduct before the employee has taken all of the employee’s paid annual leave, the employer must pay the employee the employee’s gross rate of pay in respect of every day of that leave not taken by the employee.
The Minister may, by notification in the Gazette, do any of the following:
fix the periods when, and prescribe the manner in which, paid annual leave is to be granted to employees in different types of employment or in different classes of industries;
suspend the application of any provision of this section to any class of employees, when the public interest so requires it.