The Finance Ministry is helping to address the shortage of child day care facilities by allowing operators to use state-owned land.
In June 2013, the government declared that reducing or eliminating the number of children on waiting lists was a priority policy. This prompted the ministry to cancel plans to sell dormitories for government workers to raise funds for reconstruction work in March 2011 disaster zone.
As there is an acute shortage of nursery schools in the Tokyo metropolitan area, the ministry informed local governments, through the Kanto Local Finance Bureau, of some 350 state-owned lots, including those vacated by demolished government dormitories.
To accelerate the establishment of nursery schools, the ministry has introduced a fixed-term leasehold program to lease state-owned land to local governments and social welfare corporations on condition that they are returned to the government as vacant sites after 20 or 30 years.
Lots used for government worker dormitories are attractive to nursery school operators as they are large and usually located in quiet residential areas. Rents under the program are low because they do not involve fixed property taxes or advance payments — which leasing tenants are usually liable for.
One example of this in action is Suginoko Hoikukai, a social welfare corporation, which opened a nursery school in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward in April. The ward rented the lot from the Kanto bureau and re-leased it to the corporation by setting its own rent.
“The rent is one-10th of that charged by private owners,” said Tsutomu Hoshino, 69, the corporation’s head. He expressed appreciation for the support provided by the ward and the ministry.
The Kanto Local Finance Bureau is also helping mothers with young children by promoting the government’s integrated reforms of the social security and tax systems.
Five young members of the bureau’s general affairs department put together a brochure designed to gain better public understanding of the reforms, which are aimed at securing stable financial resources for social welfare and pushing ahead with fiscal reconstruction at the same time.
“Child care assistance is a new feature of the integrated reforms, but this has not yet been properly understood,” said Ryuji Ishibashi, 35, leader of the five-member team. “We decided there is a need for an easy-to-understand brochure written from the viewpoint of child-rearing families.”
The brochure, produced in May, has only eight pages, compared with 55 pages in the previous explanatory document. Explanations on specific reform plans start with ones on child care support, with many illustrations and graphical charts to aid understanding.
“We aim for active interactions with local residents,” said Akira Watabe, chief of the ministry’s Division Controlling Local Finance Bureaus. “Instead of imposing policy measures, we’d like to promote collaboration with local communities through exchanges of views with a wide spectrum of people.”
REFERENCE: THE JAPAN TIMES
, but I totally had the wrong idea when I read the thread title. I was thinking:
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