Labour Ministry urges offices to have day care centers

 There are only 67 "day cares" in 300,000 business establishments nationwide.

DirectorGeneral Padungsak Thephasdin na Ayutthaya said both the public and private sectors should support and promote day cares because it would not only help improve child development but also prevent the problem of child labour.

His office had tried to get employers to build more centres and a motherchild breast feeding corner so the workers would be at ease with child raising issues.

Padungsak said the department had its own model day cares at Nakhon Pathom and Samut Prakan and urged that if any business establishment wanted to build one, they could call a hotline 1506 for information.

Padungsak said that a National Statistics Office reported that this year there were 35.53 million people employed - 15.93 million of which were women.

Another report of productivity last year found there were 18.7 million women aged 15 to 49, but it was not determined how many were in the labour market and which sectors were they working in.

However, it was likely that many labourers working in industry and the service sectors had preschool children and were unable to find baby sisters or day care centres they could afford.

If the business establishments build a day care as part of the workers' welfare, it would help employees be more productive knowing their children were taken care of.