ISLAMABAD (PPI) - Working and professional women residing in the Federal Capital have demanded of the government especially the female legislators in National Assembly and Senate to enact laws ensuring establishment of day care centres in all the government departments. A large number of women interviewed by this news agency on Thursday said that majority of people living in Islamabad basically belong to other parts of the country and they have to face many problems to meet the official and domestic requirements while caring their kids. They claimed that more than half of the women working in public and private sector living without any family members in the city have to take care of their kids. Therefore, these working women have no other opportunity to leave their children at private day care centres that charge thousands of rupees per month. We are paying over four thousand rupees to the owner of a day care centre in sector F-7 for my three kids. Both I and my husband are government servants and are living in a rented house, so it is quite hard for us to spare such amount out of our monthly salaries, said Sehrish Azhar, a government employee living in F-6/2 sector. Islamabad currently has just two government-run day-care centres that are too insufficient to provide any relief to a large number of the working women living in Islamabad. One such facility is run by Social Welfare Organisation at the Aabpara Community Centre and the other by the Women Development Ministry at its new building near Secretariat. The private day care centres operated in different residential sector charge Rs. 1,500 to Rs. 5,000 per baby but most of these centres can accommodate only 20 to 30 children at a time. The shortage of day care centres compel them to pay hefty amounts to their owners as they have no other option to tackle with this problem. Before the year 2000, there were very few of the females got engaged in jobs, but now the situation is quite different as thousands of educated women are entering into the practical field every year. The Capital Development Authority (CDA) has finalized a project worth Rs 380 million for construction of five daycare centres in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in sectors F-10, F-11, G-6, G-11and H-8. ILO will provide consultancy to the CDA for preparing daycare centres designs, while the later will arrange funding and land for the project. It is obviously a positive step to facilitate the working women but there is a need to establish adequate number of day care centres as the population of the city has already reached up to one million. According to reports, all the public and private sector entities in most of the developed countries are bound to set up day care centres for the kids of their female employees in the vicinity of their buildings. Tayyyeba Rasool, anther working women, said non-availability of proper childcare centres is forcing many women to leave their jobs at a time when a lot of opportunities are opening up for them in every sphere of life. It is unfortunate to see many women abandon their careers to take care of their kids in absence of support by their family members and employers as well, she said. Rizwana Bibi, a mother of two kids, who has been working in a private institution for the last seven years, said she had to face critical times when there was no one available to take care of her kids. Most of the working women were of the view that establishment of day care centres could help boost performance of the female employees who have been effectively contributing their services towards national development.