VietNamNet Bridge – Experts have warned about the alarming nutritional health of preschool children in HCM City. Parents keep complaining about the lack of nursery schools. Meanwhile, the budget for preschool system development has been increasing steadily.

The HCM City Nutrition Center has expressed its worry about the increasing number of obese children in HCM City.

Dr. Do Thi Ngoc Diep, Director of the center, said at a conference discussing the implementation of the school meal project in late February 2014 that the situation of the children’s nutritional health is “alarming”.

According to Diep, 48 percent of preschool children in HCM City are “too fat,” 10.5 percent obese and 4.3 percent malnourished.

Some analysts have commented that the obesity in HCM City is even more serious than in the US.

The nutrition center is considering designing the standard sets of menus for preschool children in an effort to help improve the children’s health. The sets of menus would be implemented on a trial basis at six nursery schools in HCM City before they are applied in a large scale.

The HCM City authorities have admitted that the city still cannot provide enough nursery schools and nursery school teachers to all children.

The heads of the districts’ education sub-department, said at a meeting with the HCM City People’s Council that there are not enough state owned schools for all the children the city, while private run schools and household run classes cannot provide safe services enough.

Dang Thanh Tuan, Head of the Go Vap district education sub-department said that the unstable teaching staff is the biggest problem for the preschool education.

Also according to Tuan, state owned schools still have not been built in two wards of the district. There are 41 unlicensed household run classes gathering 250 preschool children, which are believed to have latent risks.

Non-state schools and classes all reported that they have trained teachers taking care for the children. However, the unexpected inspection tours to some classes found that the teachers only exist in the… reports. At some household run classes, there were only babysitters and every babysitter had to take care for nearly 10 children.

Parents complained that they have a lot of worries when leaving their children at nursery schools with babysitters and teachers. They fear that the babysitters, when trying to cut down expenses, ignore the principles on food safety and feed children with unsafe food with no clear origins.

They fear that their children cannot play well and safely at school. Most of the household classes are located in rent houses, which do not have good material facilities, including the outdoor playing fields.

Therefore, the parents got angry when hearing Nguyen Tien Dat, Deputy Director of the HCM City Education and Training Department, commenting that Vietnamese children can receive the best care services in the world.

He said that in developed countries, there is no state owned school for the children aged under 3, while private schools set very high tuitions.

The words, spoken out by Dat at a working session with the Binh Chanh district’s working session, which was reported by a lot of local newspapers, have been heavily criticized by the public.

Compiled by Chi Mai