The president of the Government of the Azores said today that his executive is going to approve, soon, legislation that will oblige enterprises with bigger employer dimension to assume responsibilities in the social area.

Carlos César was speaking in the ceremony of inauguration of the day-care centre “O Girassol”, managed by the Social Centre of Atalhada, in S. Miguel, and he was referring, exactly, to the need of flooding more quickly the day-care centres network in the Region.

Remembering that the Government already invested, in this extent, nearly a million euros - and that it is preparing measures of increase of its financial support in the payment, for the families, of the day-care centres -, he added that there are already very efficient appeals to bring the private investors for the area of the social service, being predicted a quick elimination of waiting lists in the most relevant population centres.

“Additionally, we will keep on working with our partners - the associations, the private institutions of social solidarity, the Mercy Houses, the social and parochial centres - in the extension of the network where the private investment is more deficient”, said the president of the Government.

For Carlos César, the inauguration of “O Girassol” day-care centre confirms the priority, given by the Government of the Azores, to the social policies of support to the childhood and to making a bigger number of vacancies available with the creation and construction of new day-care centres, but this priority also has expression in other services, such as the network of nursemaids and kindergartens.

“In fact, in parallel to the enlargement of the network of formal social equipments of support to the family, the nursemaids network in the Azores already has a total of fifty three services, distributed by the islands of S. Miguel and Terceira, which give answer to 186 children between the four months and three years of age, and in Faial we are going to begin the training courses, reckoning, for now, with seventeen inscriptions”, he underlined.

The regional support network to the childhood comprehends at present 302 equipments, with capacity of answer for nearly twelve thousand children and youngsters, being that, of these equipments, more than half a hundred are day-care centres with capacity for nearly two thousand children.

“We are, in this way, in presence of a global strategy that happens in the improvement and qualification of the whole support system to the early childhood and in the convocation of bigger responsibilities next to traditionally distant sectors of these areas of intervention. It is a new phase in which there are hoped new and even better results”, the president of the Government concluded.