The Control Yuan has recently demanded that the Ministry of the Interior check the safety and fire prevention measures of public nursery schools after finding that nearly 70 percent of them were in violation of government regulations.
Control Yuan member Yin Jeo-chen (尹祚芊) said that in an investigation of 1,177 public nursery schools nationwide, she found that 40.4 percent, or 476 schools, did not have a legal operating license. Yin said that 28.1 percent, or 331 schools, were found to be in violation of land use laws.
INAPPROPRIATE
Yin said many government-funded nursery schools built from the 1960s to the 1980s borrowed space from local community centers or temples, causing many children to attend nursery schools in inappropriate environments.
Yin said the Control Yuan has requested that the ministry further investigate unlicensed public schools and submit a report by the end of this year.
THORNY
To solve the thorny problem of nursery schools violating land use laws, Yin suggested that the ministry use rooms in public schools left empty because of Taiwan’s low birth rate to accommodate the preschoolers.
Meanwhile, unlike public-run childcare centers, a majority of private nursery schools were found to conform to the law, Yin said.
However, Lin Yueh-chin (林月琴), chief executive of the Jing Chuan Child Safety Foundation, said that many lower-income families were forced to sent their children to the cheaper public nursery schools and she worried that if the government failed to tackle the problem, the safety of the children would be compromised.
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