Japan Is Mandatory To Plan Safety Bus Starting April After Balit Death

JAKARTA - The Japanese government on Wednesday decided to require the installation of safety devices in about 44,000 buses used by kindergartens and child care facilities nationally starting in April, after a toddler was left alone on a kindergarten bus and died of a heat shock.

Every kindergarten or child care facility found violating a new mandate will be operationally suspended. Manuals for staff will be written to ensure children are monitored safely.

In order to encourage rapid implementation, the government aims to subsidize 90 percent of the cost of installing safety devices, up to a maximum of 200,000 yen (1,400 dollars as) per bus. Funding for subsidies will come from a new additional budget that the government plans to submit to parliament later this year.

For a period of one year, once safety devices are mandated, the government will allow facilities to take alternative measures as a pause, such as attaching inspection graphs to buses.

The decision, made at a meeting of relevant ministries and institutions, came in response to the death of a 3-year-old girl in Shizuoka Prefecture last month. She died of heat shock after being left in a kindergarten van for several hours.

"We will urge facilities to have safety systems installed at the end of next June, to avoid unnecessary delays," said Masanobu Ogura, minister in charge of policies relating to children, as reported by Kyodo News, October 12.