Leave: What Pakistani Law Actually Requires

Ask ten Pakistani HR managers what leave the law requires and you will get ten confident, different answers. The confusion is structural. There is no single leave statute; there are provincial shops and establishments laws for offices and commercial premises, factories legislation for industrial workers, separate maternity benefit statutes with their own history, and — since 2023 — a federal enactment for the Islamabad Capital Territory that introduced paternity leave into Pakistani statute law. Which numbers apply depends on where the workplace is and what kind of establishment it is. This briefing lays out the map as of July 2026. Day counts across these statutes are stated in brackets throughout, because several have been amended provincially and each must be verified against the current text before it goes into a policy.

First, find your statute

The threshold exercise is jurisdictional, and most leave-policy errors happen here, before any numbers are involved. Labour is a provincial subject since the Eighteenth Amendment, so the starting questions are: which province (or the Islamabad Capital Territory) is the workplace in, and is it a shop or commercial establishment, a factory, or something with its own regime — a mine, a road-transport undertaking, a newspaper establishment. An office in Karachi answers to Sindh's statutes; the same company's plant in Faisalabad answers to Punjab's; its Islamabad office answers to the ICT versions. One employer, one handbook — three legal baselines. A national leave policy is lawful only if it meets the highest applicable floor everywhere it applies.

Offices and shops: the shops and establishments laws

For commercial establishments — offices, retail, services — the governing instruments are the provincial shops and establishments laws: the Sindh Shops and Commercial Establishments Act 2015 in Sindh, and the West Pakistan Shops and Establishments Ordinance 1969 as separately adapted and amended in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, with an ICT application of the 1969 framework in Islamabad [current texts and amendment status in each jurisdiction — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER].

The classical structure of these laws gives an employee three streams of leave. Annual leave — commonly styled privilege leave — accrues after twelve months of continuous service [number of days, carry-forward limits and encashment rules — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Casual leave covers short, unforeseen absences and typically does not accumulate [days per year — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Sick leave is separate, and under several of these statutes is payable at less than full wages unless the establishment's terms improve on it [days and pay rate — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Sindh's 2015 Act restated and in places enlarged these entitlements relative to the 1969 Ordinance [the Sindh figures — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER], which is precisely why a Karachi handbook cannot simply be photocopied for Lahore.

Factories: a separate ledger

Factory workers are outside the shops and establishments laws and inside the factories legislation — the Factories Act 1934 as provincially adapted, and in Sindh the Sindh Factories Act 2015. The architecture is similar but the numbers and mechanics are the statute's own: annual holidays with pay after twelve months of continuous service, taken consecutively subject to the statute's rules on splitting and carry-forward [day count and mechanics — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]; casual leave with full pay [days — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]; and sick leave [days and pay basis — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. The factories regime also carries the working-hours, overtime and compensatory-holiday machinery with which leave interacts: a worker required to work on a weekly holiday is owed a substitute day under conditions the statute fixes, and the leave ledger has to capture this or the establishment quietly falls into arrears of days rather than rupees.

Maternity, and now paternity

Maternity benefit long predates the modern debates. The West Pakistan Maternity Benefit Ordinance 1958 remains the template in most of the country, entitling a woman worker to paid maternity leave — historically six weeks before and six weeks after confinement — with employment protection during the period and restrictions on dismissal [current periods, qualifying service and pay basis in each province — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Sindh legislated its own Sindh Maternity Benefit Act in 2018, restating the entitlement with its own periods and enforcement [the Sindh figures — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Mines have a separate historical statute, and women covered by provincial social security may draw maternity benefit from the institution rather than the employer where the schemes so provide [interaction between employer-paid maternity benefit and social-security maternity benefit — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER].

The significant recent development is federal but territorially confined: the Maternity and Paternity Leave Act 2023, applying to establishments in the Islamabad Capital Territory. It grants maternity leave on a sliding scale by birth order — [180 days for the first child, 120 for the second and 90 for the third — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER] — and, for the first time in Pakistani statute, paternity leave [30 days, available a limited number of times — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER], with the leave paid and with penalties for employers who refuse it [scope, pay basis, number of availments and penalty provisions — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Employers outside Islamabad are not bound by it, but two practical effects have already crossed the territorial line: candidates increasingly expect paternity leave as a term, and multi-city employers face the question of whether to run one national standard at the ICT level or administer different entitlements by city. That is a policy choice; the statute only decides Islamabad.

Holidays, weekly rest and the edges

Around the leave streams sit the fixed points. Covered establishments must observe a weekly holiday under the shops and factories laws, and workers are entitled to paid festival holidays under the applicable festival-holidays framework, with substitute days or premium pay where work on a festival holiday is unavoidable [the applicable instruments and number of festival holidays per year in each province — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. And at the edges of the map are categories the general statutes do not reach or reach differently — managerial staff excluded from "worker" definitions, teachers, domestic workers under Punjab's dedicated statute, mine and transport workers under their own regimes [coverage boundaries — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. For excluded staff the contract is the entitlement, which makes the drafting of leave clauses for senior employees more consequential, not less.

What policy can add — and cannot subtract

Every statute in this area is a floor. An employer may grant more annual leave, full-pay sick leave, longer maternity leave, paternity leave outside Islamabad — and many do. What no policy, contract or consent can do is provide less than the applicable statute for a covered employee, and courts and inspectors treat a signed acceptance of sub-statutory terms as void, not as a waiver. The recurring failures are quieter than outright denial: leave records not maintained in the form the statute prescribes, encashment on exit calculated on basic pay where the statute requires the full wage [encashment basis — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER], accrued annual leave extinguished by a policy cap that the statute does not permit, and casual leave deducted from annual leave as an administrative habit. Each of these surfaces years later, priced across the whole workforce, in an inspection or a final-settlement dispute. A periodic review of the leave provisions in your handbook against the current statutes of each province you operate in — the kind of exercise described in our leave policies practice note — is the inexpensive version of that discovery.

The leave table

Leave type	Who is covered	Statutory source	Entitlement
Annual (privilege) leave	Commercial establishment employees	Sindh Shops and Commercial Establishments Act 2015; West Pakistan Shops and Establishments Ordinance 1969 (as adapted, Punjab/KP/Balochistan/ICT)	[days after 12 months' continuous service; carry-forward and encashment per statute — TO BE VERIFIED]
Annual holidays with pay	Factory workers	Factories Act 1934 (as adapted); Sindh Factories Act 2015	[days after 12 months; consecutive-day and carry-forward rules — TO BE VERIFIED]
Casual leave	Both regimes	Same instruments as above	[days per year, full pay, non-cumulative — TO BE VERIFIED]
Sick leave	Both regimes	Same instruments as above	[days per year and pay basis — TO BE VERIFIED]
Maternity leave	Women workers, most of Pakistan	West Pakistan Maternity Benefit Ordinance 1958; Sindh Maternity Benefit Act 2018	[period and pay basis; qualifying service — TO BE VERIFIED]
Maternity leave (ICT)	ICT establishment employees	Maternity and Paternity Leave Act 2023	[180/120/90 days by birth order — TO BE VERIFIED]
Paternity leave (ICT)	ICT establishment employees	Maternity and Paternity Leave Act 2023	[30 days, limited availments — TO BE VERIFIED]
Festival holidays	Covered workers, all provinces	Provincial festival-holidays framework	[number per year; premium or substitute day for work — TO BE VERIFIED]
Weekly holiday	Covered workers	Shops and establishments / factories laws	One day per week; substitution per statute

What this means for you

Map every workplace to its statute before writing a single number into the handbook, and where you operate in more than one province, decide consciously between one national standard at the highest floor and per-province administration. Verify each bracketed figure above against the current provincial text — not a summary, the text — because amendments have not moved in step. Keep leave registers in the prescribed form and reconcile them at every exit, since encashment disputes are the most common way leave law reaches a court. And treat the 2023 Act as a signal even where it does not bind you: entitlements in this area have moved in one direction for a decade, and the policy written to yesterday's floor will be renegotiated sooner than you plan. For the statutory baseline in any specific configuration, our employment law practice maintains the province-by-province position.