The Ministry of Labor and Social Protection aims to ensure that up to 1,000 children younger than three benefit from family-type crèche services. The state intends to regulate the mini-crèche services, while babysitters will obtain professional training certificates and these will be paid officially, with their work becoming economic activity, IPN reports.
The Ministry intends to ensure a balance between work and family, developing and authorizing mini-crèche services. This way, the Government will stimulate, by state budget subsidies, the initiatives to open mini-crèches.
“The system of public crèches that exists in the Republic of Moldova is insufficient. The current normative framework does not enable to develop private crèche services. The services to care for children of an early age are not regulated. The national child protection program for 2022-2026 includes a subsidization program for creating family-type crèche services. It goes to services provided by babysitters at their homes. It is a babysitter with a professional training certificate who looks after five-six children. The future babysitters will attend courses at vocational schools. We planned a budget of 10 million lei for opening at least 1,000 places in such crèches as from next year,” Minister of Labor and Social Protection Marcel Spatari stated in the “Special Edition” program on the public TV channel Moldova 1.
Also, Marcel Spatari said the state will promote the European model of childcare voucher so as to stimulate the entrepreneurs to open mini-crèches inside the company. The childcare voucher represents a nontaxable sum of money offered by employers for covering employees’ costs associated with crèche services.
“The legal framework concerning crèches created inside companies was already approved. To promote this model, initiatives referring to employers are needed. We will draft a bill to introduce childcare vouchers for the employers to be encouraged to help the young families to cover the cost of such services inside the company,” stated Marcel Spatari.
According to statistics, only 16% of the children under two in Moldova attend crèches and only 39% of the families with a child younger than three are employed.
