A Chinese firm reportedly plans to ask its staff to seek approval before they get pregnant, provoking scorn in the state-run press and on social media.<\/p>\n
Workers at a finance firm in Henan province were said to have been told they must apply for a “place on the birth-planning schedule” – and only if they had been employed for over a year.<\/p>\n
Those who became pregnant without approval may be penalised.<\/p>\n
The plan has been heavily criticised on social networks and in the media.<\/p>\n
A commentator in the state-run China Youth Daily said the company regarded its workers as “tools on the production line” rather than human beings, the AFP news agency reports.<\/p>\n
Employees are also unhappy, with one complaining that it was impossible to guarantee that a pregnancy would follow the schedule set by the company.<\/p>\n
‘Only a draft’<\/strong><\/p>\n The firm, in Jiaozuo, in the central province of Henan, has recently hired a lot of young women and is said to have been concerned that they would all go on maternity leave at the same time.<\/p>\n A representative of the firm admitted that it had circulated the plan to staff, according to news portal The Paper, quoted by the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n However, the representative reportedly said the plan was only a draft that was intended to invite comment from employees.<\/p>\n The plan distributed by the firm suggested that only married female workers who had been with the company for more than a year would be allowed to conceive – and only within a specific period.<\/p>\n “The employee must strictly stick to the birth plan once it is approved,” the statement said.<\/p>\n Employees who became pregnant in violation of the plan, and in a way that affected their work, risked a fine of 1,000 yuan (\u00a3102; $161), the statement said. They may also have to forfeit year-end bonuses and promotion or awards.<\/p>\n Communist China enforces strict family planning policies, famously restricting couples to having only one child.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Chinese firm reportedly plans to ask its staff to seek approval before they get pregnant, provoking scorn in the state-run press and on social media. Workers at a finance firm in Henan province were said to have been told they must apply for a “place on the birth-planning schedule” – and only if they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":131198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,7],"class_list":["post-131196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-togbe-afede-xiv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=131196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/131198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=131196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=131196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=131196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}