Parenting and working sometimes can prove a hard multi-task and therefore ways of solving the problem might be considered like leaving young ones in day care facilities.
Do you take your child there or know of someone who relies on this help? If you do then you might want to think twice or conduct a deeper survey as this facilities apparently can be hazardous for a child’s health or safety.
Well according to latest expose, when the children become restless, the caregivers resort to unorthodox means to keep the business running.
It is understood that they will sometimes give the children a teaspoonful of codeine, a prescription drug used to treat mild to moderately severe pain and can be highly addictive.
Other times they will have the children take a small amount of alcohol which knocks them right to sleep, sometimes till evening when their unsuspecting mothers pick them up.
“Sometimes we mix local liquor with a soda and once we give babies, they will sleep for hours,” a caregiver told journalists.
According to experts, the dark, ill ventilated rooms are the main source of diarrhoea, malnutrition, rickets and pneumonia.
Naivasha sub-county hospital superintendent Angeline Ithondeka further revealed that highest number of children admitted in the pediatric ward are from the centres.
“We have recorded tens of cases of diarrhoea and malnutrition among minors from Karagita where there are tens of these centres and it easy to spread disease from one minor to the other,” Ms Ithondeka said.
There is also the issue of who licenses these centres. Does the responsibility lie with the county or the national government?
Another solution would be to set up formal day cares within the workplace for breastfeeding mothers.
In Naivasha for example, only Oserian offers these services.