Japan has resumed a coupon program that provides working parents with discounts for babysitting services due to high public demand.

The government had halted issuing the coupons earlier this month since they had hit its annual distribution quota of 390,000 tickets.

¡°As we continued to hear voices of concern from child-rearing families who use babysitters, we were able to coordinate with related parties and resume issuing the coupons from today,¡± children¡¯s agency minister Ayuko Kato said at a news conference Tuesday.

However, the children¡¯s agency is changing some of the rules. There will no longer be a limit on the total number of coupons that can be issued for the year, but each company will only be able to apply for half the number of coupons compared to before.

The babysitter coupon system was implemented in 2016 as part of the government¡¯s efforts to aid coworking and coparenting families, offering a financial discount to parents who are looking to hire babysitters to take care of their children while they work.

Two coupons can be used at once per child per day, with each ticket providing a discount of ?2,200. One household is allowed to use a maximum of 24 coupons per month. There are no income limits for households that can apply to receive these discount coupons and are offered to families who have children under the third grade in most cases.

The discount can be used when paying for services from partnering babysitting companies, which currently number around 70.

It is a company-led system, meaning that various businesses can apply to the government to receive the coupons, which can then be handed out to employees who fit the criteria.

According to data collected by All Japan Childcare Services Association ¡ª the organization in charge of managing the coupon system ¡ª the number of companies applying for the coupons has been increasing every year since they began counting in 2018, with around 314,000 tickets having been handed out to 3,899 companies in the fiscal year of 2022.

Within the distributed tickets only 200,000 have been used by families, while 190,000 still remain with the companies that have applied for them. The government is asking for the unused coupons to be used first.

¡°We will put in the effort to create an environment where working parents can balance both work and child-rearing,¡± Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Monday when announcing the resumption of the discount coupons.