Tokyo plans to make daycare free for all preschool children starting in September next year, the city governor announced as part of efforts to boost Japan’s low birthrate.
The move aims to reduce the financial burden on families by expanding a policy of free daycare for second-born and subsequent children to first-borns as well.
While many developed countries are struggling with low birthrates, the problem is particularly acute in Japan, where the population has been declining for years.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Japan is facing the crisis of a declining number of children, which isn’t going away,” Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said as she announced the plan this week.
“There is no time to spare” to address the problem, Koike added, echoing warnings from the prime minister and other officials of a looming demographic crisis.
Japanese media said the policy in Tokyo, one of the world’s biggest cities with a population of 14 million, is the first initiative of its kind at a regional level in Japan.
Public daycare is available to working parents in Japan, but the national government is planning to widen access to all households.
Koike also said earlier this month that she wants to introduce a four-day workweek option for government staff in Tokyo as part of a nationwide push to encourage parenthood.
Japan has the world’s second-oldest population after Monaco and the country’s immigration rules mean it faces growing labor shortages.
Koike, a former minister and television anchor who has governed Tokyo since 2016, won a third term in July on vows to boost social welfare benefits while acknowledging challenges facing residents, such as inflation.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS