Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2011 May 18 - 24 [WELFARE]

Gov’t daycare support in disaster-hit area insufficient

The government has failed to study the conditions at daycare facilities or help provide necessary daycare services in the Tohoku region devastated by the March 11 disaster.

The Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry reported last month that the number of damaged daycare facilities in the three disaster-hit prefectures comes to 34 in Iwate, 131 in Miyagi, and 38 in Fukushima. These numbers, however, are not based on a detailed investigation.

According to the three prefectural governments, the number of fully or partially destroyed daycare centers amounts to 67 in Iwate (as of May 9), 253 in Miyagi (May 13), and 115 in Fukushima (end of April).

The Ministry is aware that every child needs daycare services in the disaster-stricken areas since their parents have to restore their homes or look for their missing families.

In 1995, a month and half after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in January, the Welfare Ministry reported that 1,716 children were enrolled at daycare facilities in municipalities they were evacuated to. It used the national budget to cover the parents’ cost of receiving the childcare service.

However, the Ministry this time has neither evaluated how many evacuated children are in the same situation nor provided their parents the same financial support.

The government is taking such a cold-hearted stance because it is now trying to introduce by June a new system to promote the privatization of childcare services, according to Teikyo University professor Murayama Yuichi.

The new system is intended to free national and local governments from their current responsibility to provide daycare services by encouraging private firms to enter the childcare market. “When did the government dismiss itself from its child welfare responsibility as mandated under state law? It must fulfill its role as required by the current childcare system,” said Murayama.