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Published on October 16, 2007

Department director-general Padungsak Thephasdin na Ayutthaya said only 67 out of 300,000 business establishments nationwide had day-care centres.

He said his department was trying to get employers to build more day-care centres and also breast-feeding areas to make working mothers more at ease.

He said the public and private sectors should promote day-care centres because it would not only improve child development and prevent the problem of child labour but also help workers be more productive, knowing their children were being taken care of.

Padungsak said the National Statistics Office had reported that there were 15.93 million women in the national workforce of 35.53 million this year.

Another report on 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 or which sectors they were working in, he said.

However, it is likely that many workers in industry and the service sector had pre-school children and were unable to find babysitters or day-care centres they could afford, he said.

Padungsak said his department had its own model day-care centres in Nakhon Pathom and Samut Prakan and urged business establishments that wanted to set up their own to call its 1506 hotline for information.

 The Nation