Working women have reason to celebrate following the approval of a draft law that will allow mothers to earn full pay during maternity leave. Cabinet last week approved the draft law that will establish and govern the Maternity Leave Benefits scheme, an insurance plan that will allow working mothers on maternity to be paid their full monthly salary when the law comes into force on July 1. Under the current law, working women on maternity leave are paid their full salaries in the first half of the leave; whoever chooses to stay at home in the last six weeks of the leave effectively forfeits 80 per cent of their pay. However, this will change when the new law is operationalised next financial year. The law will come as a huge relief for working women, their famillies, and those who espouse women’s rights and parenthood. Research has shown that the initial months are so essential for mother-child relationship and bonding, which is crucial in a child’s development. The law will also encourage women to exclusively breastfeed children, which is important for the children’s proper growth in the first six months. This is besides the fact that women will now concentrate on taking care of their infants without the stress over where they would get money to cater for their families’ needs if they chose to take full length maternity leave. The development is also a wakeup call for private firms that don’t respect maternity leave, especially those that have a habit of dismissing female workers when they conceive or take maternity leave. Such institutions need to urgently rethink their human resource policies by discarding archaic and and inhuman tendencies.
