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ABOUT 20,000 children and 4000 staff from ABC Learning centres remain in urgent need of help following the child-care group's demise, the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union says.
Now that arrangements have been finalised for between 3500 and 4000 children and about 600 staff from the 55 ABC Learning centres that have already closed, attention should be focused on the larger number of children and staff in centres that were given a three-month reprieve, the union said.
A total of 241 ABC Learning centres were receiving $30 million in Federal Government funding to remain open until March, but buyers would still need to be found, said the union's general secretary, Louise Tarrant.
"We would argue that the majority of these centres might not have been profitable, under the ABC Learning business model, but are not unviable," Ms Tarrant said.
"In many cases they are meeting specific community needs and on that basis there will be real value in trying to keep them open."
The child-care giant's problems began in early November last year when ABC Learning centres went into receivership, owing about $850 million, including $182 million to the ANZ Bank and about $200 million to Westpac.
The receiver divided the centres into three groups: 720 in ABC Learning Centres One, which were deemed profitable and likely to trade their way out of difficulties; 241 in ABC Learning Centres Two; and the 55 deemed unprofitable.
Angus Trigg, spokesman for the receiver, McGrathNicol, told the Herald that for those centres that had closed on December 31, accommodation for the 3500 to 4000 affected children had been arranged in continuing ABC Learning centres and that these new places were an average of only 2.5 kilometres from the centres that had been closed.
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Ms Tarrant said there had been reports that some families in Victoria, where most of the closures had occurred, were having difficulties with the new arrangements, and a small number of staff had reportedly been offered reduced working hours and reduced incomes.
- reprinted from The Sydney Morning Herald