The government is planning to introduce adoption leave, basing the provision on the way the maternity leave option works out, The Malta Independent on Sunday has learned.

A draft legal notice that has been seen by this newspaper is intended to amend the Employment and Industrial Relations Act to enable mothers and fathers to take 16 weeks of leave upon the adoption of a child this year, and 18 weeks with effect from next year.

The introduction of adoption leave will eliminate what sources said is discrimination between parents who have a child of their own and those who, for various reasons, choose to adopt.

The duration of adoption leave falls in line with the extension of maternity leave from 14 to 16 weeks with effect from this year, and to 18 as from 2013.

Sources told this newspaper that whereas unions have welcomed the idea, employers still have to give it the green light. But the government plans to go ahead and it is expected that the legal notice will be published shortly.

This stipulates that, in the case of an adoption by a single parent, the adoption leave will be available in its entirety to that parent. If both parents are in employment, whether with different or the same employers, each parent will be entitled to half the adoption leave.

Payment for adoption leave is to be borne in the same way as maternity leave, with employers paying up to the first 14 weeks of leave, while the remaining weeks – two this year and four from next year – paid by the government.

The legal notice specifies that employees who avail themselves of adoption leave cannot be dismissed by their employer for exercising this right.

It also provides for cases where the employee in question does not resume duties at the end of the adoption leave, in which case the employer should be paid the equivalent of the wages paid during the adoption leave.

Between 2005 and 2009, there were 297 adoptions by Maltese parents.