Maternity leave, Paternity Leave and Parental Leave?

By William Antwi Asiedu

Life, indeed, is full of contradictions. Working mothers, like all other mothers, are encouraged to exclusively breast-feed their babies for the first six months after birth in order to lay a solid foundation for them to enjoy healthy life. However, the mothers are granted only three months maternity leave to be with the new-born babies. 

The question is; how are the mothers supposed to have enough time to complete the exclusive breast-feeding ‘exercise’ when they are expected to return to work only 12 weeks after being delivered of their babies? 

The fact is those employees who stick strictly to the labour rule on maternity leave tend not to get much from nursing mothers who are literally forced to return to work after their 12-week maternity leave.

This is because such mothers come to work under a lot of pressure – thinking about how their babies are being catered for by helpers and may, therefore, be quite unproductive at work. It is also a fact that some lactating mothers experience pains in their breasts when the milk in them increases and their babies are not around to be fed.

So why would any employer deceive him or herself into thinking that a nursing mother (employee) with painful breasts, and who is also breaking under pressure will work simply because she had reported to work?

Another point too is that, fathers are not granted even a single week’s leave to stay at home and support the mothers, some of whom might have had painful caeserian sections or other surgeries and thus need help, the best of which may come from their husbands or partners.

Why wouldn’t the labour laws be reviewed to grant parental leave to both mother and father and not just maternal leave to the mother? The parental leave should be an employee benefit that provides paid or unpaid time off work to care for a child or make arrangements for the child's welfare. The idea of parental leave should include  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternity" \o "Maternity" maternity,  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternity_(law)" \o "Paternity (law)" paternity, and  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoption" \o "Adoption" adoption leave; and the minimum benefits should be stipulated by law. 

Some people may argue that parental leave benefits may hurt businesses, especially smaller ones, and may lead to employer discrimination of people they fear will make use of the parental leave benefits, in particular women. But the fact remains that nursing mothers or fathers hurt businesses anyway because they can hardly concentrate on the job and give it their best.

There are some instances where some mothers bring along their babies and house-helps to work so that they can sneak out periodically to breast-feed the babies who are kept in vehicles and under trees in the arms of the house-helps, who get tired of carrying the babies for long hours. 

Some mothers also close from work at 2.00p.m. and rush home to feed their crying babies. Their relatively early exit from work is in spite of the fact that they report late to work; sometimes as late as 10:30 am. 

We should all note that giving birth to children and dumping them in crèches or in the arms of house-helps can be very suicidal, in that the babies tend to lack the emotional development needed to face the current harsh realities of life when they become adults. Children must possess both good intellect and emotional intelligence. It is not enough to feed and clothe children.

First coined in 1990 by Salovey and Mayer, emotional intelligence is described as a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one's own and others' feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one's thinking and actions.

 Since we want to raise children to be successful and fulfilled, emotional intelligence is very important and parents must have enough time to help their children to cultivate it right from DAY ONE!

Students to sleep in tents?

The Ghana Armed Forces have been requested to stand by with tents to provide temporary shelter for senior high schools (SHS) which would not be able to complete structures for usage by fresh students next month.

A Daily Graphic report on Wednesday indicated that the Ministry of Education, which made the request, explained that the measure had become necessary because not all the blocks being constructed would be ready for the intake of the first year SHS students who were due to begin the SHS programme in September.

Hahahahahahaha! Agggggyyyyyyeeeeiiiiii!  Hehehehehehe! Ghana! Are we serious about the education of our children at all? Ei, ei, ei! Fully grown students should go and sleep in tents. How? So will they bathe in tents and poopoo in tents; or what? Will the police provide security for the students while they sleep in the tents? Will the tents have air-conditioners? How will ventilation be like? There are too many questions about this REFUGEE-style measure and I dare say that no BIG MAN’s child or ward will sleep in the tents. These big men sit in air-conditioned offices and take decisions that create problems for the ordinary people. The Ministry is saying the measure is temporary; but how temporary will it be; today, tomorrow or the day after? Hahahahahahaha! Mr Tettey-Enyo, as for this your measure, Menyoo kora, kora, koraaaaa! It is not good at all. Parents should think deeply before they decide to throw their wards into these tents. Now that we have many churches in the country, may be the churches building should be considered as alternate accommodation rather than the tents. After all some of the churches started in classrooms before acquiring their own structures.

Catholic Church  Sh*t bombed again!

When we are looking for decent spaces to accommodate SHS students, some unruly persons too are busy throwing human waste at decent places – church! Hmmm.

A large volume of human excreta has been dumped on the premises of the Bodwesango St. Peter’s Catholic Church in the Adansi North District of the Ashanti Region.

This is the second Catholic Church in the country to be so desecrated. The building was smeared with the offensive material under the cover of darkness by persons yet to be identified.

Everything in the church, including the Holy Bible on the altar, the effigy of the Virgin Mary and the cross were all smeared with the faecal matter with impunity.

Five persons suspected to have committed the act have been arrested by the local police.

They are Kwame Abdulai, 26, Kofi Police, 26, Akwasi Marfo, 23, Prince Kwabena Awuah, 41, and Kwabena Abdulai.

Why on earth would anybody throw human excreta into a church building and even smear a BIBLE? This evil act has even dried up the ink in my pen. I’m so sad. But I will never cry for such acts of, of, of, errrmmm, errmmm; I leave it to God!