TERRITORY OF CHILDHOOD

It is good that there is no shortage of children's entertainment centres in Baku as of today where children can play to their heart's content. Parents can leave their children for an hour or longer to be able to attend to urgent matters, shopping or just to spend some time together sharing the fun of child play with their kids. Another thing makes us sad. One can spot plenty of irregularities in many playrooms for children that can be found today at large trade and entertainment centres and other places. The irregularities range from sanitation and hygiene to playroom admission rules.  

Territory of irresponsibility 

What kind of thing is a child playroom? As a rule, it is a small fenced-in area with a set of playground equipment: multilevel labyrinths with obstacles, plastic huts, slides, trampolines with slides, dry pools with balls… Children go into raptures about all those things. But is it safe for a child to stay in a play area? Do playroom personnel always answer for the kids' safety and health? Where should one go to complain if a child gets injured when staying at a children's entertainment centre? What is their sanitary condition?

As a rule, child playrooms work from 10.00 till 22.00 and charge their fee, up to 5 manats, by the jour. However, judging by our personal experience and that of R+ respondents, there is no single system for keeping children at such centres in Baku. Neither are there any official regulations to control this sphere. Some playrooms issue a receipt to parents leaving their children there. Others issue no receipts at all. Some accept plastic card payments. In other words, different methods are used to register the fact that a child stayed in the care of playroom personnel. Sometimes a child's stay in a playroom is not registered at all: they do not ask you to give your or your child's name or show you ID. 

The age of children allowed to stay at child play centres varies from 2 to 12. But this does not imply breaking the children down into interest groups like at pre-schools, for instance. It is clear that cr?che kids will not find common ground with children from older groups and no interests to share. But this fact is unfortunately disregarded in playrooms. A 8-10 year old child climbing up special playing net to the very top and then rapidly coming down may injure little kids who are on the floor. An older child may seriously injure a younger one when jumping on a trampoline or coming down a slide. Such things happen because the personnel fail to keep a proper eye on the children. Some playrooms though admit young children solely together with their parents to prevent risk of injury. Others ask the parents to wait in a special room if they want to watch the children. Kids are admitted to such complexes without parents starting from the age of three. Yet this fact does not totally rule out the risk for a kid to be hit by an older child. 

Many parents insist that conflicts happen permanently among children. Child centres' personnel supposed to be answerable for order and children's safety are as a rule unable to settle this problem. This happens above all because the amount of playing equipment is not adequate to the number of children. Sometimes there may be very many children in a playroom. According to parents' observations, some child play centres do not replace broken-down playing equipment for many months which may also lead to children's injuries. Alongside this, it often happens that a child is brought by one parent and picked up by the other and the centre's personnel do not even notice the difference. Meanwhile a receipt or a plastic card used to pay at the turnstile will confirm that the organization received the pay for its services and its personnel are obliged to observe safety standards. The personnel of playing complexes are criminally liable for the life and health of the children staying in the playroom. 

 Substandard standards  

It should be pointed out that many playrooms ignore elementary sanitary and hygienic standards.

Dilara Babayeva has met with a case in point. "My granddaughter is one and a half years old," she said. "I made a per hour payment for the child's stay in a playroom and we entered the room together with her. My granddaughter was wearing socks. I was bare-footed. It was certainly my fault not put on shoe covers: I just forgot about them. But none of the playroom personnel reminded me that it was a must to put on shoe covers. When we left the room, I was frightened to see that the soles of my bare feet were black. There was a cover of dirt was all around the playroom. The hands and face of my granddaughter were dirty. Her socks were black with dust." 

R+ has learned from the centre for hygiene and epidemiology of the republic's Health Ministry that the directors and personnel of children's entertainment centres may be disciplined for failure to observe sanitary and hygienic standards. Yet no such cases have been registered up to now despite the fact that all facilities of this kind are monitored on a monthly basis. Health examinations for playroom supervisors top the list of such checks. However, the children's parents say, they sometimes see playroom personnel having acute respiratory disease. Meanwhile the institutions' administration should not allow them to come to work in such situations as they have to be in permanent contact with children. 

According to the director of one playroom at a large trade and entertainment centre in Baku, the supervisors' duties include efforts to: ensure order, keep the equipment in good working order, familiarize the children with the equipment, organize their leisure, make their stay in the playroom safe and comfortable and ensure their life and health safety. They have not right to leave the children unattended. The parents are entitled to demand all these things from the playing centres' personnel and if they spot flaws in their activity, they should not hesitate to report them to the administration and do it without fail. 

"All these demands are implemented at our centre," the playroom director said. He also added that the facility's operation is subordinated to the trade and entertainment centre's management and relevant information is supplied to them on a regular basis. The playroom services being provided to consumers, that is, to individuals for their personal needs, these relations are regulated by the law of Azerbaijan "On protection of consumer rights".  

Let it be pointed out that in accordance with Article 5 of this law, the seller (producer, contractor) is obliged to provide the consumers with a product (work, service) of adequate quality complying with requirement of regulatory documents, contract terms and information on the product (work, service) as provided by the producer (contractor). The said information must be placed on a signboard. Also provided must be the necessary and reliable information on the services provided to enable the consumer to make the right choice. 

As regards child entertainment centres' services, it follows from the above said that the contractor must provide the consumer with information on major properties of its services, rules and conditions for the efficient and safe use of the products (services) and rules for providing the services. The contractor must specify the person to do the work and give information on the person. It is very important to be informed on the consumer properties of the services; their prices and other things said above should be indicated in the rules for visiting child play centres. It is also necessary to give information on the person looking after the children as the services are provided: their position, surname, given name and patronymic. One can find none of all that at Baku's child entertainment centres. At the best, as was pointed out, they ask the parents to leave their contact data to get touch with them in force majeure circumstances. 

It is hard to specify the time when playrooms are going to start working according to rules in Baku. Hopefully that will happen in the near future. In any event the parents have the right to choose between entrusting their offspring to supervisors of a child play centre or rather stay there and keep an eye on their kids. Although they can also try and demand that the services provided to them should be of an appropriate quality as is legally due to consumers. It appears that this will be the most infallible way out from the current situation because it will make them feel answerable and be up to the high requirements of sound competition.