THE Women, Community and Family Development Ministry is studying the best ways possible to encourage registration of nanny services as part of the efforts to resolve childcare problems in the country.

Deputy Minister Hannah Yeoh said the ministry needs to look into the possible improvements on the matter as childcare issue has become a national one.

“Our first step now is to find out how many of them (nanny services) are in the market, because if they are unregulated, our first step is to encourage registration.

“We are now looking if we want to amend the Childcare Centre Act 1984, on how we do it and how to encourage (registrations) because this is an industry that has existed for a long time and we are not only talking about sending (kids) to friends but also about sending to relatives,” she told reporters after launching TalentCorp Malaysia’s Life at Work Awards 2018.

She however said the issue of unregistered nanny services is very much related to poverty, where parents could not afford to send their kids to the registered ones.

“If you send to registered ones, they are very expensive because there are rules that they have to (follow), like the number of kids for every teacher.

“A lot of them send to relatives or nannies who look after one or two kids. So we have to look at the practicality of the issue and how do we encourage registration and to regulate voluntarily. It’s not easy,” she said.

Last month, Yeoh announced that all government agencies will be required to have childcare centres by January 2019 following the shocking death of a five-month-old baby who was found in a freezer in his babysitter’s house.

As of now, only 205 offices in the government sector and 52 offices in the private sector have childcare centres. – August 11, 2018.