Sri Lanka Maternity Leave Pay Calculator

Maternity leave in Sri Lanka is governed by three statutes depending on where the mother works. The Shop and Office Employees (Regulation of Employment and Remuneration) Act No. 19 of 1954, § 18A (inserted by Act No. 8 of 1980) covers private-sector shop, office, BPO, hospitality and similar workers. The Maternity Benefits Ordinance No. 32 of 1939 (as amended, most recently by Act No. 15 of 2018) covers women in industrial undertakings — factories, mines, and other regulated workplaces. The Establishments Code Chapter XII, § 8 covers female public servants.

Who is covered.The entitlement does not depend on whether you are permanent, on a fixed-term contract, or working through probation — it attaches to the employment relationship, so casual and recently confirmed employees qualify too. Shop, office, BPO, hospitality, retail and similar private-sector roles fall under the Shop & Office Act; factory, mine and other regulated industrial roles fall under the Maternity Benefits Ordinance; government and provincial-council staff fall under the Establishments Code. Plantation workers sit under a separate set of estate regulations with their own daily-wage convention, so treat any estate-sector figure here as an indicative starting point and confirm with the estate office.

The entitlement table this calculator applies:

• Shop & office / industrial · first or second live birth. 84 working days at the average daily wage (14 antenatal + 70 postnatal).
• Shop & office / industrial · third or subsequent live birth. 42 working days (14 antenatal + 28 postnatal).
• Shop & office / industrial · stillbirth or post-7-month miscarriage. 42 working days postnatal only.
• Public service · first, second or third live birth. 84 working days full pay. Births four and onward are governed by separate ministerial circulars (12 weeks half-pay or no-pay) and are out of scope for this calculator.

The arithmetic the calculator runs:

1. Daily wage.(Monthly basic + qualifying allowances) ÷ working days in the month. To keep the answer stable, the calculator uses the long-run average for your work-week: 22 days for a 5-day week, 24 for a 5½-day week, 26 for a 6-day week. § 11 of the Maternity Benefits Ordinance defines payment as the worker's average daily wage.
2. Antenatal start date. Count backward from the expected delivery date by the entitled antenatal working days (14 for a live birth, 0 for a stillbirth). The calculator skips weekly off days and gazetted public holidays so that exactly 14 true working days separate the antenatal-start from the EDD.
3. Postnatal end date. Count forward from the date of delivery by the entitled postnatal working days. Public holidays that fall on what would otherwise be a working day are skipped — they extend the leave in calendar terms but do not consume entitlement.
4. Return to work. The first working day after the postnatal end date.
5. Total pay. Daily wage × entitled working days. The calculator also runs the equivalent identity (basic + allowances) × entitlement ÷ working days per month as an independent cross-check; the two formulas agree to the rupee.

Why a fixed working-day divisor?§ 11 of the Maternity Benefits Ordinance pegs payment to the “average daily wage,” but the number of working days in a given calendar month swings between roughly 20 and 27 depending on weekends and holidays. If the divisor changed every month, the same salary would produce a different daily wage for a March delivery than for a September one. To keep the figure stable and predictable, the calculator uses the long-run average working days per month for your contract — 22 for a 5-day week (52 × 5 ÷ 12 ≈ 21.7, rounded to the conventional payslip integer), 24 for a 5½-day week, and 26 for a 6-day week. These are the same divisors Sri Lankan payroll departments use for pro-rata pay. To check exactly which days fall inside your leave window, pair this tool with the Sri Lanka working days calculator, which owns the 2026 – 2027 gazetted-holiday dataset this calculator reads.

How holidays and rest days interact. A gazetted public holiday that lands on what would otherwise be a working day is not deducted from your entitlement — instead it pushes the return-to-work date one calendar day later, so you still receive the full count of paid working days. A holiday that falls on your weekly rest day (Sunday for every contract here, plus Saturday on a 5-day week) is already absorbed by the weekend and changes nothing. This is why two mothers with identical salaries and the same expected delivery date can have different calendar return dates: the one whose leave window spans more public holidays is simply off for longer.

A note on the antenatal split.The 14 antenatal working days are an entitlement, not an obligation — a mother may choose to work closer to her due date and carry more of the leave to the postnatal side, subject to her doctor's advice and her employer's agreement. The calculator shows the default statutory split (14 before, 70 or 28 after) because that is the floor the law guarantees; the total paid working-day count is unchanged whichever way the split is arranged.

Maternity pay is treated as wages for EPF (8% employee + 12% employer) and ETF (3%)contributions under the EPF Act No. 15 of 1958, and is subject to APIT under the Inland Revenue Act if the total monthly remuneration crosses the IRD's monthly relief threshold. For the APIT projection use the Sri Lanka income tax calculator. § 18B and § 12 of the relevant statutes also prohibit dismissal during maternity leave — a purported termination served while leave is running is legally void.

Note what the wage base does notinclude: overtime, bonuses, and one-off incentives are excluded from the “average daily wage” that maternity pay is built on. Only the contractual basic plus allowances that count as wage under § 11 feed the daily-wage figure. If you want to see how overtime is treated separately under the same Shop & Office Act, the Sri Lanka overtime pay calculator works out the 1.5× statutory rate on the normal hourly wage.

• Department of Labour Sri Lanka — Shop and Office Employees (Regulation of Employment and Remuneration) Act No. 19 of 1954, § 18A (maternity leave)
• Department of Labour Sri Lanka — Maternity Benefits Ordinance No. 32 of 1939 (as amended), §§ 10 – 11
• Ministry of Public Administration — Establishments Code, Chapter XII § 8 (public-service maternity leave)
• Department of Labour Sri Lanka — official site (daily-wage divisor guidance)
• Government of Sri Lanka — gazetted public, bank & mercantile holidays

Statute references on this page were last cross-checked against the Department of Labour's official site on 2026-05-12. The page is reviewed when an amending Act or new Wages Board gazette changes the underlying rules.