Housemaid claims annual leave transport allowance

My housemaid is claiming annual leave, transport allowance for herself, husband and four children. She claims the amount which covers the travelling costs from the city where we live to her husband’s home village. But I recruited her just here in the city where she works for me and not from her husband’s home village. Is she entitled to the annual leave transport allowance as she claims? Am I obliged to pay the annual leave transport allowance covering herself, her husband and four children? Am I required to provide her with annual leave transport allowance every year? If she claims air travel allowance, is she entitled to it?
JU, Dar

Order 5(2) of the Labour Institutions Wage Order, 2013 gives an employee the right to travel allowance once in every two years of continuous service with the same employer. If you have provided the employee with leave travel allowance during her annual leave for this year, then in her next year’s annual leave you will not be bound to give her leave travel allowance. She will bear her own annual leave travel costs next year. The law is silent on the second question you have raised; whether the housemaid is entitled to leave travel allowance for her spouse and four children. However, the best practice based on repatriation allowance paid to an employee when the contract is terminated, has always been to pay the leave travel allowance covering an employee, the employee’s spouse and up to four children or dependents. The leave travel allowance paid is equal to bus or train fare and not air fare but again the law does not expressly specify whether such leave allowance covers transport costs from place of work to the employee’s place of domicile, husband’s place of domicile or to the place of recruitment. The practice has been to pay the employee, the spouse and up to four dependents travel allowance from the place of work up to the employee’s home town or village.