Bangladesh Parliament passes bill to ensure safe child daycare centres

Published at 01:24 pm June 16th, 2021

Children at a community day care centre in Sat Tala slum of Banani, which was converted from a drug den Dhaka Tribune

The Women and Children Affairs Ministry will monitor the centres

Parliament has passed the Child Daycare Centre Bill 2021, seeking to support the children of professionals and working women as the number of nuclear families is increasing day by day.

State Minister for Women and Children Affairs Fazilatun Nesa placed the bill during the session on Wednesday and then it was passed by voice vote.

According to the proposed law, there would be four types of child daycare centres in the country.

They are – child daycare centres to be run with government subsidy; daycare centres to be run by the government any government agency, directorate, department, statutory agency or autonomous agency to provide free services; daycare centres to be run by individuals or organizations for commercial purposes; and non-profitable daycare centre to be run by any individual, organization, non-government organization, club, association, corporate sector or industrial sector.

Registration will be required to set up the child daycare centres and there would be a separate authority for the registration of the centres.

The Women and Children Affairs Ministry will monitor the daycare centres.

As per the bill, the maximum punishment for failure to maintain proper safety and security of children in the daycare centre would be a fine of Tk10 lakh (not less than Tk5 lakh) or two years of imprisonment or both.

For repeating the same kind of offences, the fine and imprisonment will be doubled.

The proposed law mentioned that if anyone runs any child daycare centre without registration, they would be fined Tk50,000.

For making any kind of offence that might cause insecurity to any daycare center, the imprisonment will be of two years or be fined Tk2 lakh or both.

If any child faces any type of health risk while staying in any daycare centre for the negligence of anyone, that person will be imprisoned for two years or be fined Tk2 lakh, or both.

If any child is lost from any daycare centre, the fine will be Tk5 lakh or 10 years of imprisonment, or both.