Prime Minister Naoto Kan attended the first meeting of the Task Force Team for Eliminating Childcare Waiting Lists at the Prime Minister's Office.

The Task Force has been established with the purpose of implementing the New System for Children and Child-rearing ahead of schedule and advancing considerations with a sense of urgency, so that waiting times for placing children in day-care facilities, which have been on the rise in recent years and approaching an unprecedentedly high level, will be reduced as soon as possible.

During the meeting, discussions took place on the establishment of the Task Force Team, its schedule, the situation of children left waiting for nursery places, and the progress in the consideration of the New System for Children and Child-rearing.

The Prime Minister said in his opening address, "The elimination of childcare waiting lists is expected to have three major effects over the short-, medium-, and long-term.
First, we need to increase the number of workers in the childcare sector. This will have a short-term job-creation effect. The elimination of the M-shaped curve is the medium-term effect, which is expected to enhance the participation of women in the workforce. And it will have a long-term effect of halting the contraction of the size of the labor force, as people will be able to engage in child-rearing with a sense of assurance, thereby stopping the trend of declining birthrate.
The elimination of childcare waiting lists will thus bring about three effects at once, in each area of social welfare, employment, and by extension, the economy. My true-to-its-word Cabinet hopes that the Task Force Team will resolve the issue at once."