LETTER | The issue of keeping children safe in the hands of child minders is not an easy one. There are 2.6 million Malaysian children aged up to four years. Many young parents work to meet the needs of their families; hence both the father and mother may be employed and require a child minder.

Under the Child Care Centre Act 1984, a ‘childcare centre’ is defined as any premise that receives four or more children under the age of four years to be cared for a fee.

Such centres must be licensed and registered with the Social Welfare Department. The Act does not cover childcare by relatives. More importantly child minders looking after one to three children are currently exempted from registration.

There are four categories of childcare centres outlined in Section 5 of the Act: home-based, workplace-based, community-based, and institution-based childcare centre.

A fifth category is a childcare centre for children with disability. Most are defined as looking after 10 or more children except for the home-based centre (four to nine children).

In 2016, the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry stated that only 4,240 nurseries and 1,650 childcare centres were registered with the Welfare Department.

No one knows the real number as most operate quietly and parents are in need of services.

If we consider the 2.6 million children under four years and take a very conservative approach and assumptions – 50 percent of women in the workforce (which is an underestimation), 50 percent use relatives look after their children, and that most childcare centres are large (an overestimation) – it would suggest that there are at least 65,000 childcare centres or nurseries operating and some are unregistered.

Many child minders of course are looking after one to three children, hence exempted from registration.

Registered childcare centres are expected to have a good curriculums and be monitored by the Welfare Department to check on staff qualifications, safety, quality of care, ratio of staff to children, nutrition, etc.

Apart from the role of the Welfare Department, the Association of Registered Childcare Providers Malaysia has worked hard to try and elevate childcare services in the country.

Major challenges

I would like to outline some major challenges and offer some suggestions on improving the safety of children in the hands of our child minders.

Firstly, there has been a call for more legislation, but it may not be a major solution. The existing laws and regulations are comprehensive, but laws are rarely preventative in nature, they often act after the fact.

One possible tightening of the Child Care Centre Act is to consider if we need to include registration of child minders looking after one to three children. These are often the most vulnerable and require a solution.

Secondly, it must be recognised that the Welfare Department is extremely short-staffed. They have a very wide scope of work and can barely cope with the needs. It has been recognised that monitoring and enforcement by the Welfare Department, of even registered Child Care Centres, is limited.

There is need to dramatically improve the staffing of the Welfare Department so that they can support the many social needs in the country. While we work to increase numbers, the quality of staff also requires serious improvement. We need to invest in large numbers of trained social workers and not depend on those who have to learn on-the-job after leaving school.

Thirdly, there must be a mechanism to report all unregistered childcare centres and child minders. While it would appear logical to enforce the law and shut down all unregistered childcare centres, finding the thousands of them may be an issue.

Parents, desperate for childcare, tend to keep quiet. Many centres do not register due to the need to meet the requirements of training and standards. Perhaps we can work nationally with both the Association of Registered Childcare Providers Malaysia and the Welfare Department to work on upgrading these unregistered centres progressively.

That is, offer an opportunity to meet requirements over time and not all at once. In addition offer support to obtain training (reduce the cost of training).

Finally, the best child minder is a parent. Our young parents both work to make ends meet in the face of the rising cost of living. Employers need to invest their profits into the employees and not just into the major shareholders.

Many industrialised countries pay better wages to allow only one parent to work. Others offer longer periods of paid support to parents to be off work, even up to two years.

We as a nation need to invest in our young families and their children. The growth and success of our nation cannot be measured by its financial success alone but also of the wellbeing of its people.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.