Centre to create creches in government offices

If the Women and Child Development Ministry has its way, women in government offices may soon spend their spare time in office with their toddlers, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Apr 25, 2007, 03:51:49 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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If the Women and Child Development ministry have its way, women in government offices may soon spend their spare time in office with their toddlers. The ministry has urged all government departments to provide at least one crèche service for the children of the women working in their offices.

WCD secretary Deepa Jain Singh has asked secretaries of all Central government departments to access the number of women who needs the support of crèche facilities for young children. Once the situation is accessed, she added, that the facilities should be provided soon.

Singh wants government departments to take a lead in providing support facilities for working women, believing that it can act as an eye opener for private institutions to provide similar service. She underlines the importance of crèches by pointing at quick societal changes where more women are joining work to supplement household income and concept of joint families is falling apart. “In such scenario working women needs support in terms of quality care of their young children while they are at work,” she said.

Backing her proposal with recommendation of National Common Minimum programme (NCMP), Singh said, the issue of inadequate crèches have been discussed at various forums and there are legislations for improving childcare services. Therefore, she emphasised on the need for opening more crèches in urban areas and the lead, she has suggested, the government departments should take.

The WCD ministry has funds crèches through Rajiv Gandhi Creche Scheme but most of them are opened for women working in unorganised sector. “Unlike west, India is yet to develop crèche culture in mothers’ offices,” a WCD official said, adding that the government can always take initiative in this direction.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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