Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1850495947

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-233603

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: His Majesty's Stationery Off.

Year of publication:: 1931

Scope:: xviii, 580 S.; graph. Darst., Kt.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter XIV. - Health and welfare of the industrial worker

Collection:: Economics Books

HEALTH AND WELFARE. 263 Employment of Trained Midwives. In addition to health visitors, trained midwives are essential so that the activities of the untrained dat may be restricted. It has been the policy of some provincial Governments to utilise their maternity hospitals as a training ground for suitable women, and in Madras, for instance, numbers of qualified midwives pass out annually from these hospitals. Some employers have also recognised the benefits to be ob- tained from trained women. The Eastern Coal Company in Jharia have for some time past employed trained midwives and have recently appoint- ed a maternity supervisor who has been engaged in training indigenous dais and attending women and children. For some years the Asansol Mines Board of Health has maintained three certificated midwives to give free attendance and advice to the women of the mining settlement, and during 1930 an experimental scheme for the training of dais at two selected centres was sanctioned by the Board. If maternity relief schemes for women workers are to succeed, trained midwives must be obtained to work in the child welfare and maternity relief centres under the health visitor, to attend confinements in the houses of the workers and to call in skilled help where necessary. Indeed, even with a woman doctor on the staff of the municipal or local board hospital, the medical service pro- vided is incomplete without a number of these trained midwives, whose work outside should be linked up with the maternity wards and with the women’s clinics. Maternity Benefits. In some of the larger industrial concerns employers have volun- tarily introduced maternity benefit schemes for their women workers, but, except in Bombay and the Central Provinces, where Acts of limited application have been passed, there is no legislation on the subject. As most people now accept the principle of maternity benefit for industrially employed women, it is unnecessary to put forward here any special plea for such a scheme. The general standard of life being so low, there can be little doubt that some form of maternity benefit would be of great value to the health of the woman worker and her child at a vulnerable period in the lives of both. We do not attach importance to the argu- ment that compulsory maternity benefits will result in employers reducing the amounts already being paid to the minimum laid down by law. Most pioneers in the field of social betterment are not deterred by enactments compelling others to follow in their footsteps. Nor do we attach weight to the argument that legislation will result in an appreciable restriction of the employment of women who are an essential part of certain of the leading Indian industries. We believe the time is ripe for the in- troduction of legislation throughout India making a maternity benefit scheme compulsory in respect of women permanently employed In industrial establishments on full-time processes. We would exempt from such provisions seasonal and part-time workers and would confine legislation to those women employed full time in the perennial factories covered by the Factories Act. Some of us would like to see the legisla- tion extended to women employed at the mines and on the docks,

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