The Jatiya Sangsad on Wednesday passed the Child Daycare Centre Bill 2021, seeking to support the children of professionals and working women as the number of nuclear families is increasing day by day.
State Minister for Women and Children Affairs Fazilatun Nesa placed the Bill in the House and it was passed by voice vote.
According to the proposed law, there will be four types of child daycare centers in the country — Child daycare centers to be run with government subsidy; daycare centers to be run by the government any government agency, directorate, department, statutory agency or autonomous agency to provide free services; daycare centers to be run by individuals or organisations for commercial purposes; and non-profitable daycare centre to be run by any individual, organisation, non-government organisation, club, association, corporate sector or industrial sector.
The Women and Children Affairs Ministry will monitor the daycare centers.
As per the bill, the maximum punishment for failure to maintain proper safety and security of children in the daycare centre would be a fine of Tk 10 lakh (not less than Tk 5 lakh) or two years of imprisonment or both.
For repeating the same kind of offences, the fine and imprisonment will be doubled.
The proposed law mentioned that if anyone runs any child daycare centre without registration, they would be fined Tk 50,000.
For making any kind of offence that might cause insecurity to any daycare center, the imprisonment will be of two years or be fined Tk 2 lakh or both.
If any child faces any type of health risk while staying in any daycare centre for the negligence of anyone, that person will be imprisoned for two years or be fined Tk 2 lakh, or both.
If any child is lost from any daycare centre, the fine will be Tk 5 lakh or 10 years of imprisonment, or both.
