Employers do not want workers to be able to use their sick leave to look after their sick children, reiterating objections they had raised when the proposal was first floated years ago.

The Malta Employers Association said that such a system would be “impossible to control” and unlikely to be well managed by doctors who have been shown to abuse sickness certificates.

It raised its objections in a press statement issued on Wednesday after the government included the idea in a Children’s Policy Framework it presented earlier this week.

The idea of allowing employees to use their sick leave when their children are unwell was first floated by the Nationalist Party in the run-up to the 2017 general election and then embraced by the Labour Party, which included it in its electoral manifesto for that campaign.

Staunch opposition from employers, who dubbed the idea “crazy” and said they would only accept it if the government agreed to foot the bill for such sick days, meant that the idea never got off the ground and was quietly shelved.

It was resurrected in the policy framework presented earlier this week, which suggests extending urgent family leave from 15 hours to 30 hours per year for people with children aged under four and allowing such people to use their sick leave allowance when their children are unwell.

But the MEA thinks that is a terrible idea and said the 15-hour urgent leave allowance was intended to cater for such emergencies.

“Sick leave is to be utilised specifically when an employee is unfit for work, and thus, by definition, should never be transferred to other persons,” it said. “Such a measure will be impossible to control by employers and could lead to abusive practices.”

The lobby group also expressed scepticism about doctors’ trustworthiness.

“The recent scandals of having sickness certificates given over the phone, and the exposure of a widespread organised system of benefit fraud, make employers sceptical of the ethical standards of the medical profession in issuing sickness certificates,” the MEA said.