OWNERS of early childhood development (ECD) centres, crèches and kindergartens at Walvis Bay are concerned about their survival after suffering financial losses and evictions in the past six months.
They were hoping to recover when permitted to reopen today, but regulations set by the Ministry of Gender Equality, Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare put a damper on this.
Regulations include that one educarer is limited to six children of up to a year old, 10 children of one to two years, 20 children of three to four years old, and 20 of five to six years.
In addition, the size of the classroom is to determine the number of children allowed, as a space of 1,5 square metres should be available for each child indoors, and 2 square metres per child on the playground.
Where children exceed the indicated number, two or more educarers should be allocated to them to ensure proper learning and caring for the children.
These measures are in accordance with approved Namibian ECD centre standards of 2012.
Centre owners say it will be difficult to operate with few children.
“How do we pay our teachers and operational costs? We had no income for six months. Some of our colleagues have been evicted as they rented space for their centres,” says Victoria Ganases from Celest Hope kindergarten.
“We only have two classrooms. Teachers were excited to hear we are allowed to operate again, but how much do we pay them?” Clifton Diamond from Namsov Centre asks.
Rosina Museke-Mubonenwa, community development and poverty eradication director at the ministry, says centres were not supposed to have large numbers of children per educarer even before the Covid-19 pandemic.
“There is really nothing surprising about the regulations. If ECD centres previously had too many children in a given space per educarer and were not observing the distance per child, they were violating the Namibian ECD standards. However, the ministry is not saying ECD centres should not admit many children, provided there is enough space and more educarers are employed in proportion to the numbers,” she says.
Museke-Mubonenwa says ECD centre owners should innovate and strategise to ensure the survival of their centres and to ensure the health and safety of children.
She says schools can operate in shifts, for example.
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