The funding for free school meals and child care took the center stage in the political arena Monday in the ongoing annual budget review.
The ruling Saenuri Party is backing the government’s stance that free child care must take priority.
“(The child care subsidy for preschool children) is mandatory under the law, but free meals are a discretionary project that has no legal basis,” said Rep. Joo Ho-young, chief of the Saenuri Party’s policy committee.
“(Free child care) is the state’s duty established to raise the birthrate and to (provide) high-quality education, the execution of which cannot be decided arbitrarily.”
The free child care system, known as the Nuri program, is designed to cover children aged 3-5, which, along with other welfare policies, faces budget limitations. The issue was recently amplified after the president’s senior economic adviser Ahn Jong-beom said free child care had a legal basis, whereas providing free school meals was not part of President Park Geun-hye’s election pledges.
Saying that political parties must apologize for pledging a series of welfare provisions during elections, the ruling party’s floor leader Rep. Lee Wan-koo called for “level-headed and comprehensive” consideration.
“It is a matter of prioritizing. The budget must be executed by prioritizing (among) welfare problems,” Lee said. He added that political parties and concerned organizations must work together to resolve the problem.
The main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy, for its part, rejected the debate.
“(The controversy over) free (school) meals was already concluded with the constitutional clause stating that compulsory education must be provided free of charge,” NPAD interim leader Rep. Moon Hee-sang said.
Moon raised concerns for the bipartisan faceoff over the issue becoming protracted, saying that “an extreme dichotomy” in pushing for either the ruling party’s free child care or the opposition-backed free meals would hamper parliamentary procedures.
The emphasis Moon and other NPAD lawmakers place on quickly moving on from the topic is thought to stem from worries that the issue may overshadow the party’s demands for parliamentary investigations into various actions of the Lee Myung-bak administration.
The NPAD has been demanding parliamentary investigations into the previous government’s four-river restoration project, “resource diplomacy” and defense projects.
NPAD lawmakers also hit back at Ahn’s comments, accusing the administration of dodging responsibility.
“Social consensus on free meals was already established, making it unnecessary for it to be pledged again in last year’s presidential election,” NPAD emergency committee member Rep. Chung Sye-kyun said.
“The foundation of the free child care policy was free meals.”
By Choi He-suk (cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)
