Daycare in Gov’t Institutions Eases Women’s Burden

Addis Ababa june29/2018 Establishment of daycares in government institutions is a new strategy in Ethiopia which is adopted in accordance to a government regulation that was passed a year ago. Following the adoption of the regulation, few government institutions have started to establish daycare centers on their premises while others making efforts to start the service. General Wingate Polytechnic College is among the institutions that have established their own daycare centre to ease women’s burden in raising children. College Dean Melese Yimer told ENA that the College has constructed the daycare to enable mothers care and nourish their babies between working and training hours. The College started the center by training babysitters and nurses it has hired for this purpose on how to care children aged between six month and five years depending on their needs and behavior. The College is planning to expand the daycare that accommodates 14 children and babies at a time. “Taking into account our experience in the area we are planning to expand the daycare services, so we are constructing health care centre and other facilities that are necessary for the children”, he said. Lubaba Abdella is one of the employees of the college and she has a six month aged daughter which is provided with care in the center. Lubaba said she can wholeheartedly focus on her duties while her child is being taken care of under a trusted care taker. “The establishment of the daycare helped me to work without any worry,” said Lubaba who previously forced to resign her work unable to balance the work and the burden of child-raising. “After I gave birth to this child I heard some information about the opening of daycare in the General Wingate Collage and I decided to be employed in this collage to raise my kid without frustration”, Lubaba said. “Here, my kid receives much care for her health and growth, I can breastfeed her and attend to her needs if there is any; so she is growing with a better health care”, she added. Ethiopian Human Right Commission is the other government institution which commissioned a daycare within its compound in 2017. The daycare has one nurse and three babysitters and has the capacity to serve around twenty children with modern facilities. Tigist Kinfe is among the beneficiaries of the daycare centre in the commission; She said that the centre has brought enormous advantages for her in raising her son. Tigist was planning to leave her job upon giving birth to her son but she changed her mind due to the opening of the daycare. The service is a relive for Tigist who commuted a long distance to her work, as it allows for her to frequently see and feed her one and half year son. “My home is far from my work place; so it would be hard for me to work in a stable manner. But the establishment of the centre helped me to feed my child in the daycare, so now I am working with full freedom”, she said. Minister of Women and Children Affairs Yalem Tsegay said that expanding daycares in governmental institutions is among major plans of the ministry to enhance the benefit and participation of women at the place of work. She said that the survey that conducted by the ministry on governmental institutions shows that working mothers have huge burden of raising children and this is hindering them from empower themselves economically. She said that some institutions have achieved their ambitions by constructing their own daycare centre but others are not. “We have established a committee that investigates the reason why some are lagging behind; this committee will identify the real gap. Following this, we will discuss with the appropriate body to solve the problem from the grass-root level”, she said. A total of 56 institutions have already established daycare centers.