The Factories Act provides that every worker who has worked for a period of at least 240 days during the calendar year shall be allowed during the subsequent year leave with wages at the rate of (a) one day for every twenty days worked in the case of adults, and (b) one day for every fifteen day’s worked in the case of children. The leave is exclusive of holidays that occur during or at either end of the leave period. Provision is also made for proportionate leave with wages for a worker who is discharged or dismissed before he has completed 240 days service. The days of lay off by agreement or contract or as permissible under the standing orders, maternity leave in case of female workers not exceeding twelve weeks and the leave earned in the year prior to that in which leave is enjoyed shall be deemed to be the days worked for the computation of the period of 240 days but shall not earn leave for these days. While calculating leave, fraction of leave of half a day or more shall be treated as one full day’s leave and less than half a day will be ignored. If a worker does not take whole of leave in any one calendar year entitled to him, the said leave is allowed to be added to the leave to be allowed in the succeeding calendar year. The total no. of leave that may be carried forward to the succeeding year shall not exceed thirty in case of an adult and forty in case of child.
5.1 Sections 79 and 53 of the Factories Act, 1948 deal with the grant of annual leave with wages and compensatory holidays respectively. Rules framed by the State Governments and Union Territories require factories to furnish information relating to number of persons employed, number of persons eligible for leave and number of persons actually granted leave during the year. It has been observed from the consolidated returns received from various States/Union Territories that 85.88 per cent of the total number of persons, who were entitled to have annual leave were granted leave. Among the states maximum number of persons who were entitled to have annual leave were granted leave except in Andaman & Nicobar islands i.e. 34.42 percent. The provisions relating to leave and compensatory holidays were reported to be generally well observed in various States/Union Territories. The statistics relating to annual leave for the year 2002 is given in Table 4.1.