CCTV being considered as mandatory for childcare centre licence renewals

SEMATAN: The Women, Family and Community Development Ministry is considering making the installation of closed circuit television (CCTV) as a mandatory condition for renewing childcare centre licenses.

Its minister, Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri, said the measure needs to be taken to curb cases of children being abused at these premises even though the government has previously stipulated that CCTV was required under the Child Care Centre Act 1984 and the Child Care Centre Regulations 2012.

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"There are those who have not installed CCTV even after being asked to comply. So we will meet (with agencies, departments and industry players tomorrow) on how to take action by not renewing the licences of centres that do not install CCTV,” she said at a media conference here Sunday (Aug 13).

"The installation cost should not be an issue as CCTV are quite cheaply available. So we want to hear feedback and how to finetune this before we implement it,” she added.

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She also said closing childcare centres linked to abuse cases needed to be studied in detail as it will impact working parents who sent their children to those centres.

"We will burden other parents so we can’t just close it down because of one case,” Nancy said, adding that there were 3,767 cases of children needing protection and care in the first half of this year alone.

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On Friday (Aug 11), she was reported to have said that her ministry was planning to enforce having CCTV at every registered childcare centre to curb child abuse cases there. - Bernama