Daejeon City Freezes Necessary Expenses for Childcare Centers to Ease Parents' Burden

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Il-woong] Daejeon City announced on the 3rd that it will freeze all necessary expenses that parents must bear for daycare centers.

The freeze measure was decided through the '2022 Daejeon City Childcare Policy Committee' held on the 26th of last month.

With this decision, the payment limits for seven necessary expense items that parents actually have to bear?daycare admission preparation fees, field trip expenses, special activity fees, vehicle operation fees, event fees, specialization fees, and breakfast/dinner meal fees?will be maintained at the same amounts as last year.

The Childcare Policy Committee also approved the payment limits for childcare fees for ages 3 to 5 and the tuition fees for childcare teacher training courses.

In the review, the committee decided to raise the payment limits for childcare fees for ages 3 to 5, reflecting the operational difficulties of daycare centers due to the decrease in children, the consumer price index increase rate, and the minimum wage increase rate.

Including the government childcare fee increase of 20,000 KRW (from 260,000 KRW to 280,000 KRW), the total increase is 25,000 KRW, raising the payment limit for 3-year-olds to 369,000 KRW and for 4- to 5-year-olds to 351,000 KRW.

At this time, the differential childcare fee that parents must bear is the amount after subtracting the government-supported childcare fee (280,000 KRW) from the payment limit, increasing to 89,000 KRW for 3-year-olds and 71,000 KRW for 4- to 5-year-olds.

However, since the city has been fully supporting the parental burden (differential childcare fee) since 2019, the city explains that there is effectively no amount that parents have to bear.

The decisions of the Childcare Policy Committee will be applied starting from the 1st of next month.

Kang Kyung-ah, Chairperson of the Childcare Policy Committee (Professor at Woosong Information College), said, “Considering that both daycare centers and parents are facing difficulties due to COVID-19, we have decided to freeze all necessary expenses borne by parents.”

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