1 thought on “Ask’N’Share”

1. 

   Rukmini Sen

   June 17, 2020 at 5:14 am

   After the amendment to the Maternity Benefits Act 2017, creche facility has been made mandatory in all workplaces with more than 50 employees. Through the initiative of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, a committee was set up with members from WCD, mobile creches and Lady Irwin College to prepare minimum creche guidelines in July 2018. In response to an RTI, the government confirmed that employers need to bear the complete cost of providing childcare to its employees. This can actually have very detrimental effects on hiring and retaining women employees, since the assumption is that it is only women employees with infant or young children who will need the services of a creche and not male employees. That creche as a facility is supposed to help any employee and that it is not a gendered service need to be first recognized and promoted.
   Whether it should be a paid facility for different sections of a University community? While the higher educational institution will provide the space and infrastructure as well, who runs the creche is of vital importance for its sustainability. In that context, thee needs to be distinction made between different members of the University. While faculty members and senior permanent administrative staff may pay for creche services, it would not be ethically correct to get payment from students and adhoc/temporary administrative staff or faculty. Cost calculation needs to be made efficiently, more parents need to think of having their children come to creche. Maintaining efficient standards of the creche together with creating a collective space for many children to interact and spend time with each other should encourage some of the employees pay for the creche facility. It needs to be a collective responsibility. It has to be thought that if this facility would not have been available, then the employee would have had to hire the services of the care worker or get the grandparents look after the kids. As a substitute of that individual family based paid care work, a collective space and personnel taking care of one’s children in the vicinity of other children, should encourage employees to pay for the facilities. Some employees and students (especially those without JRF) may be exempted from the payment, or their payment needs to be subsidized.
   What is of utmost importance is to understand that a facility like a hygienic, efficient creche inside the protected environment of an higher educational institution, helps in addressing the anxiety of the parents, the well being of the child, reduces dependence on individualized methods of rearing kids and most importantly enables women (more than men) to come back to the workspace much earlier (depending upon her health conditions) after the birth or adoption of a child.

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