Women’s rights to work frustrated by Parliament, employers and nurseries || Newspapers (Arabic)

As Safir newspaper published an article about the challenges facing pregnant women workers especially noting the new maternity leave law which has yet to materialise despite its urgency.  The report describes the long journey of the new law on maternity leave which was withdrawn from the current labour law by MPs Gilberte Zouein and Michel Moussa and referred to the Council of Minister.  The latter endorsed the reform and the new proposed law that was then referred to the Parliamentary Commission for health, labour, social affair, mother and child, and administration and justice.  The maternity law reform was endorsed as such without including any other reforms on the labour law.  This was then referred for discussion to the general assembly session of 8 November.  This session of Parliament was not held in view of the boycott by the 14 March MPs.  As a result, all laws which were included on the agenda for discussion during that session were left pending.
MP Michel Moussa noted that increasing the maternity leave from 2 months to two and a half months was the only option presently available because several MPs as well as employers are refusing to extend maternity leave to more than 10 weeks.  Furthermore, it should be noted, that the allowed period of maternity is not in harmony with the law regulating child care services.  The president of the syndicates of child care services and nurseries indicated that according to the law, nurseries can only host children between the age of 2 months to three years but that nurseries prefer to avoid admitting children who are only two months old wrongly arguing that these children require their families care and love, and thus hiding their the fact that they are poorly prepared to provide the needed services.
A senior official in the syndicate of child care and nurseries, Siham Alam, classified nurseries in Lebanon into three categories: a) those who accept babies as young as two months old (around half of total nurseries); b) those who accept children as of 6 months old; and c) those who accept children as of one year of age.  Working mothers who do not have family support from their own mothers or in-laws thus face serious problems.  In additions, nurseries are geographically unequally spread and women may not find venues close to their homes of work place.  This means that women cannot see their children during their working hours if the nurseries are remote.

Source: Al-Safir 4 December 2012