Saima has finally decided that if she could not find a reasonable daycare center for her two-year old daughter in a few days she would quit her job for her child since she could not afford the heavy fees which the daycare centers in the capital city are charging.
Saima Asif, 30, is a working woman and mother of 2-year-old Zainab. She works for a non-governmental organisation but she cannot continue her because she has to take care of her child. “As our housemaid has quit and there is no one around to baby-sit for Zenab, I will have to quit my job because I cannot afford the heavy charges of the daycare centres in the city,” Saima told Pakistan Today.
Another fact that is worrisome for Saima is that there is a shortage of daycare centers in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. This dearth provides a kind of monopoly to those who are in the daycare business and it causes an immense inconvenience for working women. And in some cases, like Saima’s, they have no choice but to quit their jobs for the sake of their children.
Saima lamented, “Though the private daycare centers provide maximum facilities to the children but they are very expensive and the women belonging to middleclass like me cannot afford their charges.” There are currently only two public sector daycare centres in Islamabad operating under the administration of the Establishment Division but they cannot cater to the need of a large number of working women living in Islamabad.
These centers charge Rs 100 to 500 per month for one baby these facilities are restricted to children of women working in government departments. There are more than a dozen private daycare centers but they charge heavy fees. Most of these private centres can accommodate only 20 to 30 children at a time. Thus the shortage of daycare centres compels the working women to pay big fees to private centres as they have no other option.
The available daycare centres are offering their services from 9am to 5pm where children can stay, have lunch, play and do their homework. The working women in the capital have to face problems in dealing with their professional matters and taking care to their children at the same time. Most of the working women interviewed by Pakistan Today said since they had come to Islamabad for job and their families live in other cities, it was hard for them to look after their children when they were working.
Therefore they have no other option but to leave their children at private daycare centres and endure the expenditures in thousands of rupees each month. Another working woman, Saba Habib, said the government must set up more daycare centres so they could contribute for the country’s development. “I’m paying over Rs 10,000 to the owner of a daycare centre in Sector F-8 for my one kid. Both my husband and I are government servants and we live in a rented house. So it is quite hard for us to spare such an amount out of our monthly salaries every month,” Saba added.
According to reports, all the public and private sector entities in most of the developed countries are bound to set up daycare centres for the children of their female employees within their buildings. In Pakistan and especially in big cities like Islamabad Karachi and Lahore, both men and women have to work for living. However, the working mothers face a lot of financial problems when they have to take leave from their work in order to take care of their children.
The daycare services, as envisaged under the Pakistan Labour Law should be provided to the lower class working women by the government. Kalsoom Fida, another working woman, said the shortage of affordable childcare centres was forcing many women to leave their jobs at a time when a lot of opportunities were opening up for them in every sphere of life.
“It is unfortunate to see many women abandon their careers to take care of their kids in absence of any support by their families and employers as well,” she said. Fouzia Bibi, mother of one child, who used to work in a private institution for the last five years had to quit her job after her first child. Bibi told Pakistan Today that the daycare centres could not handle a toddler since they had to be breastfed.
She said her daughter was only four months old and she just could not leave her to a daycare centre. Most of the working women were of the view that establishment of more daycare centres could help boost performance of the female employees who had been effectively contributing towards national development.
Expensive daycare centres a nuisance for women
