FREE nursery care is to be made available for all three- and four-year-olds in Jersey.
In a number of late pre-election spending promises, the Council of Ministers will announce on Saturday that they want the ‘postcode lottery’ for parents to end and want to make pre-school care free for all.
And it is thought that they also want more money to be invested in the Island’s bus network and extra funding for the enforcement of discrimination law.
The promises follow last week’s decision to scrap GST on essential foods and freeze the duty on road fuel. Ministers decided on the amendments to their own spending plan at last week’s Council of Ministers meeting, but did not want to announce the cuts because of their U-turn on GST.
It is understood that the late amendments to the Business Plan – which sets out departments’
spending plans for 2009 and which will be debated just weeks before the Senatorial election – will be
formally announced on Saturday.
Article posted on 28th August, 2008 - 2.59pm
One Article Comment
And just how are they going to provide this free nursery care? By building more nursery units onto the existing primary schools at tax payers’ expense? What happened to Senator Vibert’s promises to the private nursery schools that Education would fund their 3 to 4 year old units? This would save the tax payer money as not only would we not have to pay to build these new units or maintain them but some of the costs would be defrayed by the nurseries themselves ie facilities that the other children use, staff training etc. If we build additional nursery units onto primary schools then more private nurseries are going to close down because it is the 3 - 4 year olds that make the whole nursery system financially viable as they do not make a profit by looking after the younger children due to the staff / child ratio. Once the private nursery schools close down, where are the parents of younger children going to go? Is Education then going to start building new units for the babies - I don’t think so. Senator Vibert should be made to stick to his promises and fund the private nurseries for 3 - 4 year old care.
As for the other “promises” - 1) How much more money are they going to waste with Connex? 2)They were going to fund the Discrimination law anyway - how about a law protecting Jersey people against EU discrimination for a change?
All this nonsense is simply to make themselves look good before the elections.