Breastfeeding mothers have a hard time balancing motherhood and their careers. Kenya Women Teachers Association (Kewota) now want the Ministry of education to establish breastfeeding centres in learning institutions, which will enable teachers to improve their output in schools.
The association was formed to act as the link between the retiring women teachers and their employer, who are often played in their quest to get their dues.
Upon adoption of this establishment into law, all the learning institutions will be compelled to build private rooms where the house helps of the lactating mothers will be staying during the day as the teachers teach to increase the productivity of women teachers across the country.
“We want a law to be put in place to allow women teachers to be accompanied by their house helps to schools where they will be breastfeeding their babies from time to time so as to increase their performance in schools.
“Such policies have been put in place in private institutions and have increased productivity and that’s what we want in our schools. Women have been discriminated against for a very long time and that’s why we came up with the association to defend and advocate for their welfare,” Kewota General Secretary Benta Opande said.
Kewota is currently holding talks with women MPs to come up with a draft law that will be tabled before the National Assembly and will be rolling out a baseline survey that will consolidate all the women in the country and their academic qualifications in a database in order to assist the government access them for jobs in state agencies.