SARAWAK has allowed nurseries and kindergartens within the Covid-19 red zone of Kuching district and those that are not under the purview of federal agencies to reopen.

All early childhood institutions in the Kuching district were ordered shut by the state disaster management committee on October 29 when the district slipped back into the red zone when Covid-19 cases began to spike.

They were ordered shut until this Friday even though the district is still deep in the red with 107 cases.

Nurseries and kindergartens in other parts of the state are unaffected by the order.

The state’s welfare, community wellbeing, women, family and childhood development minister, Fatimah Abdullah, however said their reopening is conditional on the operators and proprietors applying for the reopening permission from her ministry.

Fatimah said in a press conference today that her ministry will also raise to the National Security Council the reopening of nurseries and kindergartens run by federal agencies.

There are 1,123 preschool classes run by the state Education Department, 1,015 kindergartens and 87 nurseries run by the Community Development Department, or Kemas, in the Kuching district.

There are another 114 kindergartens and four nurseries run by the National Unity Department.

Fatimah said the decision to reopen these early childhood institutions was due to appeal by working parents and the severely impacted operators.

“As the public, private and the business sectors are not shut down, the closure of the nurseries had forced working parents, especially those serving on the frontline and in essential services, to send their children to their grandparents, relatives and even unregistered centres where the risk of infection is high due to non-compliance with the SOP (standard operating procedure),” she added.

While nurseries and kindergarten have to make a written application to reopen, Fatimah said centres running special needs like those run by the community-based rehabilitation centres, the One-Stop Early Intervention Centre (OSEIC), AGAPE counseling centres and Sunflower, could continue to operate as normal as their sessions are held in small groups or on a one-to-one basis.

She said ongoing therapies and intervention programmes are important for the recovery process for children. – November 11, 2020.