Mother At 57, She Wanted Child Care Leave. Sacked Days Before Retirement | Read

For Saphla Devi, her 60th birthday on April 30 is full of mixed emotions. A manager for Railways subsidiary RITES for the last 31 years, Saphla is now also a mother, something that she's wanted to be all her life and only achieved three years ago after 15 bouts of In-vitro Fertilisation treatments. But the need to take care of this little boy has also got her suspended just days before she retires on her birthday. That means that she loses all her retirement benefits. Saphla got the news of her suspension shortly after the National Commission for Women took up her battle to get Child Care Leave or CCL. On April 5, the women's body told the PSU that they should facilitate her demand to get two years to raise her child. But instead of obliging, they told her she was suspended. One of the reasons they wrote in their letter, "She has applied undue outside pressure in getting her leave sanctioned and has no regard for the work."