Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Sachs Harbour (May 13/02) - Six months since the community's only day care froze solid, parents are still waiting for the service to reopen.

The child development centre had only been open for six weeks when its co-ordinator, Edna Elias, quit last September. Elias says she didn't have enough staff to keep taking care of the centre's 13 children. With no co-ordinator and no staff, the program was shut down.

Maria Storr, manager of child development programs for the Inuvialuit Regional Corp. in Inuvik, says there were difficulties finding a replacement for Elias. It took two months before someone was finally hired. During that window, no one was looking after the building.

When the new co-ordinator went to check on the building in early November, the furnace had run out of fuel and the pipes were frozen.

"We had tried for so long to get this program going," Storr says. "We spent thousands and thousands of dollars to get it up to standard. We had to build a ramp, a kitchen, and bathroom. And then we finally got it going, but we had staffing issues. With that falling through, we left it to the community, because if the community needs it, they need to take hand of it."

Storr says it's now up to the Sachs Harbour Community Corp. to solve the problem. The IRC has sent materials for repairs, and new pipes have been donated by the NWT Power Corp., but so far, none of the repair work has been started.

Elias, who is now organizing a raffle draw to raise funds for the repairs, says the building is still exactly the way it froze. Initially, a community member had volunteered to do the repairs. But that was before he saw how much damage there was.

Now, Donna Keogak, the chair of the community corporation, says professional help will be hired from Inuvik to do the repairs. "We want to get it done because it's a real need in the community," Keogak says. "Hopefully, it will be open this month. Hopefully."

Keogak herself has been juggling the care of her two pre-school children ever since the centre closed.

She says sometimes her 12-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter have to stay at home to take care of their brothers when she can't find a babysitter.

"Before, there was people in the community who were willing to keep the kids, but when the child development centre opened, those people found jobs themselves. Now we have a hard time finding people in the community willing to babysit," Keogak says.

The community corporation doesn't have an estimate on how much the repairs will cost, but parents have agreed to bump up their fees from $25 a month to $150 a month for each full-time care child, to help pay for the repairs.

It's still a bargain compared to what babysitting costs, says Keogak, whose babysitting bills are in the range of $300 to $400 every two weeks.