The municipality of Ungheni will have new nursery groups for children under three, at three of the town’s kindergartens. The government has included the projects in the Single Programming Document 2025-2027, as part of a wave of 99 nursery projects funded across the country, according to the Executive’s press release. For Ungheni, the decision from Chișinău confirms a demand the town had already documented, since the start of the year.
Which are the three projects
In the annex to the Government Decision, the Ungheni district appears with exactly three nursery projects, all in the municipality: one intervention each at the “Andrieș”, “Delia” and “Licurici” kindergartens. At “Andrieș” it is, according to the wording of the document, a new nursery group; at “Delia” and “Licurici”, new groups. The exact number of groups and the sum allocated to each institution do not appear on the line in the annex.
The projects were not born in Chișinău. The Ungheni municipal council voted them as early as 29 January 2026, through three separate decisions to submit them for funding, and a day earlier the town hall had held a public consultation on preschool education. The municipality also takes on an own contribution to each project.
Why the town needs them
At that consultation, the town hall put a figure on the problem: the real need for nursery places in the municipality is, “relative to existing demand”, between 150 and 200. It is a demand that, at first glance, seems to contradict the district’s demographics. The number of newborns has halved in a decade — from 1,565 live-born children in the Ungheni district in 2014 to 732 in 2025; in the town, from 413 to 219.
The explanation is not a rise in the birth rate, but the way demand has shifted. Young families are concentrating in the town, and a nursery is not only about child care: it is the condition that allows parents — usually mothers — to return to work sooner. That is precisely the stated aim of the programme, dubbed “Parents at Work, Children in Nurseries”. And the segment it targets — children under three — is poorly covered today: in 2025, they accounted for only about 13% of those enrolled in early childhood education in the district.
How the national programme works
The amendment approved by the government adds a total of 115 new local projects, of which 99 are nurseries — together, 155 groups for over 3,000 children, from 142 localities across the country. It is the programme’s third edition; the first two had produced 59 groups for 1,247 children, in 37 localities. The value of the 115 local projects exceeds 587 million lei, of which nearly 259 million come from the National Fund for Regional and Local Development. The project was presented by Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Bolea, and implementation runs through the regional development agencies — for Ungheni, ADR Centre.
There is, however, a rule that explains why only the town won: the programme is open only to local authorities with at least 3,000 residents. In practice, the district’s smaller villages could not submit applications — a limit built into the programme’s design, not a choice by Ungheni.
The test is in the execution
The news turns into nurseries only on the construction site. The programme guide requires the projects to be implemented by the end of 2026, within the horizon of the Single Document 2025-2027, and the pace of the previous editions — 59 groups opened in two years — makes the 155 groups now promised at once a real capacity test for the ministry and the town halls. The exact split of groups and money per kindergarten, as well as the line between the state grant and the town’s contribution, are set in the implementation annexes, which have not been made public.
Update (16 July). The first funding contract has already been signed — the one for the “Andrieș” kindergarten. From the National Fund for Regional and Local Development, 791.650,02 lei will be allocated to create and equip with equipment, machinery and furniture a nursery group for children under three, with the implementation deadline set at 31 December 2026, the Ungheni municipality town hall announces. The contracts for the other two kindergartens, “Delia” and “Licurici”, are to be signed shortly. Once the groups are set up, children may be enrolled from the age of one.
The central fact comes from the Government’s press release of 1 July 2026 and from the annex to draft decision single reg. no. 483/MIDR/2026, where we identified the three named projects in the municipality of Ungheni. The decisions of the Ungheni municipal council (29 January 2026) and the minutes of the public consultation are public documents in the State Register of Local Acts and on the town hall’s page. The demographic and early-childhood-education data are from the National Bureau of Statistics (own calculation, district filter). The exact number of groups and the sums per institution, as well as the works timeline, were not public at the time of publication.