Tomas: Fictitious Sick Leave Down Significantly Five Months into This Year

Bratislava, 19 June (TASR) - Fictitious temporary sick leave decreased during the first five months of this year, with social-insurance provider Socialna poistovna (SP) posting the most significant year-on-year (y-o-y) drop in the number of people on sick leave in January, when it went down by over 15,000, Labour Minister Erik Tomas (Voice-SD) told a news conference held on Thursday with SP general director Michal Tariska in attendance. In May, the number of people on sick leave declined by 12,957 y-o-y. "The more money we save on fictitious sick-leave allowances, the more money will be left for people who really need it, for example, for pensions for disabled people. We adopted legislative changes due to this initiative of ours at the turn of the years. The most important one was that we strengthened the powers of the SP's medical examiners so that they have the right to terminate unjustified sick leaves as of January," said Tomas. SP posted the lowest drop in the number of people on fictitious sick leaves in March, going down by 3,842, however, this was related to the influenza period. The average length of sick leave also decreased in five months of this year, going down from 43.5 to 41 days. In 2023 the average length of sick leave per capita was 46 days. Five months into 2025, people in Slovakia spent on sick leaves 1.2 million days fewer than in the first five months of last year, specified the minister, adding that one in ten sick leaves were terminated by medical examiners. SP thus saved €24 million on paying out sick-leave allowances in January-May 2025. Additional savings were reached thanks to the fact that people returned to work and paid levies to social and health-care insurance funds and the same applied to income taxes, said Tomas. ko/mcs