Young mothers cuddling their babies in Borno State recently.

Oh! Yes, it is a yearly ritual,
the World Breastfeeding Day is here again, but this time, to reawaken  the consciousness of employers of labour to the need to encourage breastfeeding in workplaces.
Although most employers would tell you they have never been against breastfeeding in workplace, but the facts still remain  that practically, you cannot be said to encourage a thing when the environment is not made enabling for such a thing to thrive. For nursing mothers to use the company’s rest room as a place to breastfeed their young ones, is to say the least, an over discouragement of a culture.
Breastfeeding is a fundamental right of a child. This premise makes the duo  inseparable especially within the first six months of delivery and stronger still as the world health organisation harps on the need for  exclusive breastfeeding.
The need to breastfeed and be  breastfed is made imperative by virtue of what the practice offers to both the giver (mother) and the receiver (child). However, for suspected lack of knowledge, most  mothers have lost their jobs for lack of harmony  between retaining their jobs and their early responsibility to their newborn while others chose the option of retaining their job at the expense of their primary responsibility to their new born. Those who  choose to play the fast one, by returning to work after one or two months of delivery hardly put in their best at work  nor serve their babies adequately.
The privately owned instutions of learning especially at the primary and secondary levels are culpable  in this regard as they would not pay their female employees after  two months of maternity leave. A gesture that simply means “resume duty or lose your pay”, even where the job position is not threatened, the fact that a nursing mother, who by every standard, deserves a better nourishment by way of feeding to recover the losses in child birth, stands a  risk of losing her  monthly pay, is enough threat to faithfully carrying out her duty and obligation to her new born.
Organisers of the World Breastfeeding Week is of the opinion that this gap can be closed by simply creating a space for mothers to breastfeeding  week are of the opinion that this gap can be  closed  by simply creating a space for mothers to breastfeeding their newborns when necessary. A Creche in a workplace is all that is needed to keep a working mother at home in her workplace so she could be optimally utilised while still breastfeeding her baby.
However, the benefit of a paid parental leave is weighed  alongside the provision of criche for early resumption of duty, far outweigh the later. Research has shown that it  correlates with lower infant mortality rates and it actually increases the chances of a mother  returning to the workplace and staying on board with higher productivity rates. Rather  than indicating any significant negative impact on the job and the  employer, it is revealed to save time and cost associated with recruiting and hiring new employees to replace the new mothers.
All the same, employers who appreciate the role of the nursing mothers in societal development, and the need to encourage them, are beginning to pick up on the advantages of paid leave.
According to Patricia Garcia, a social analyst and writer, “Google began offering its female employees up to five months paid maternity leave, in an effort to keep women from resigning after starting a family.
“So far, California provides new mothers with up to six weeks of pay at approximately 55 per cent of their usual salary. The state of New Jersey,  through its  family  leave  insurance programme, offers the same amount of time, paying out two-third of a woman’s wages.
… that is a start but we still have a long way to go she said.
On the local scene, Enugu State and Lagos State now grant six months maternity leave as a proof of their support for exclusive breastfeeding. It is expected that in not so long a time, other states will see reason to give nursing mothers a good time to give their new born the nutrition they deserve.

Sylvia ThankGod-Amadi