Japan Press Weekly

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2011 February 9 - 15 [POLITICS]

Gov’t should stop introducing market forces into childcare service: JCP

Japanese Communist Party lawmaker Takahashi Chizuko urged the government to cancel its plan to turn childcare services into a business industry at a meeting of the House of Representatives Budget Committee on February 8.

Under the pretext of solving the serious issue of children waiting to enter childcare centers, the government plans to submit a bill to introduce a new system on childcare services in this ordinary session of the Diet. However, the true aim of introducing the new system is to decrease both the national and local governments’ responsibility for childcare programs and encourage the private sector to enter into childcare.

Under the new system, each municipal government will specify the number of hours parents are certified to use childcare services in accordance with parents’ working hours. However, this certification does not guarantee admission to childcare centers. If the number of childcare centers falls short from the number of children applying to enter, children will be put on a waiting list. Furthermore, this new system will charge high additional fees for services that parents use beyond the certified time limit.

JCP representative Takahashi criticized the proposed new system as being useless in solving the issue of children being put on the waiting list for childcare centers, introducing a beneficiary-pays principle into childcare service, and changing local governments’ roles of being childcare service providers to being “like a real estate agency which gives people information about a vacant room.”

Yosano Kaoru, minister of state for measures for declining birthrate and gender equality, admitted that under the new system parents will have to pay for the services they receive. He also said that municipal governments’ role in the new system will be “to provide assistance to high-priority children to enter childcare centers.”