Regions across China are allowing adults without siblings to take up to almost three weeks of paid leave when their parents are hospitalized to help care for the growing grey population, media reports said Monday.
The local regulation in Central China's Henan Province offers only children with an ill parents no more than 20 days of paid leave, while the rules in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Hainan Province allow up to 15 days and those in Fujian Province offer a total of 10 days.
The leave will only be offered to those whose parents are 60 years old or over.
Fujian has also said employers face being blacklisted if they fail to implement the policy, which will make it harder for them to raise money or bid for government contracts in future.
Sichuan, Chongqing and Hubei are also mulling their own local policies, the China News Service reported. It is thought that Chongqing and Hubei might allocate only children around 10 days but that Sichuan will likely make only 3 days of leave available.
There are currently more than 220 million people over 60 years old in the country, 16.1 percent of the population, with numbers growing, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
A total of 15.3 percent of senior citizens believe they need to be taken care of, more than double the number in 2000, Xinhua reported.
The law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of the Elderly requires the relatives of elderly people to show concern for their mental demands and forbids ignoring them.
