Gwangju City Completes Conversion of 35 Public and National Childcare Centers... Total of 87 Centers Expanded

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] Gwangju Metropolitan City announced on the 28th that it has completed the conversion of an additional 35 centers into public daycare centers this year, in accordance with the four-year plan goal to expand national and public daycare centers.

Currently, Gwangju has 87 public daycare centers, accounting for 8.1% of all daycare centers, which is a 3.9% increase compared to last year (52 centers).

The proportion of children using public daycare centers also rose by 3.5%, from 6.8% last year to 10.3% this year.

Gwangju aims to expand to 121 public daycare centers by 2022 and plans to continue increasing the number of public daycare centers next year as well.

Next year, the city plans to secure an additional 35 public daycare centers and will sequentially invest 1.8 billion KRW annually as city incentives.

So far, to reduce the financial burden on autonomous districts with low fiscal independence, the subsidy rate for the public daycare expansion budget has been adjusted from the original 25% each from city and district funds to 35% from city funds and 15% from district funds.

The city supports the necessary equipment costs for expanding public daycare centers, provides shared facility improvement funds as compensation for rental income loss when private daycare centers in apartment complexes convert to public daycare centers, and plans to support remodeling costs up to 50 million KRW per location when social welfare corporations convert to public daycare centers.

Gwangju expects that with this expanded incentive support, many social welfare corporation daycare centers that needed functional reinforcement due to aging facilities, as well as private daycare centers in apartment complexes facing rental cost difficulties, will actively participate in converting to public daycare centers.

Im Young-hee, head of the city's Birth and Childcare Division, said, “Through the expansion of public daycare centers, we will provide high-quality childcare services to children who will be responsible for the future generation and create a childcare environment that parents can trust, continuously promoting ‘Making Gwangju a Good Place to Have and Raise Children.’”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.