Kahlon pledges more daycare subsidies
Kulanu continued its socioeconomic policy-driven campaign with a national early childhood education plan presented on Wednesday.
The plan involves subsidized daycare costing NIS 1,200 per month, saving families an average of NIS 1,300 per child under age three each month, and the responsibility for the daycare centers would move to the Education Ministry from the Labor and Social Services Ministry.
In addition, they plan to have more subsidized daycares be built, and the existing ones be renovated. The licensing process for private daycares would be regulated, but shortened.
This will cost NIS 2.1 billion each year, and will take four years to fully implement.
“We are 55 days before the election,” Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon said. “We hear about mergers, divisions, hit lists, speeches and videos. The one thing they all forgot to say is what they plan to do for the good of the public, for young couples and for children.”
Kahlon said young couples struggle with the cost to pay for daycare and the quality of the frameworks.
“I want my granddaughter to be in a daycare center that is supervised by the Education Ministry, not the Labor and Social Services Ministry, and I want all the children in Israel to receive a quality education at a fair price,” he added.
Economics Minister Eli Cohen said the plan will reduce situations in which parents have to think twice about whether to go back to work because of the cost of childcare.
“Children aren’t born at age three, they don’t start eating at age three, they don’t need clothes and toys at age three and we certainly don’t just start caring about them at age three,” Cohen said, referring to the age when free public school begins.