In light of recent crimes and accidents involving children after school, the government is considering a pilot program for people who stay at home to provide after-school care for kids whose parents work, officials announced Wednesday.

The program was proposed earlier in the day by Cabinet secretariat special adviser Haruo Shimada to the government's liaison committee on preventing crimes against children, and the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has expressed interest in introducing it, the officials said.

Shimada, a Keio University professor, told the committee that young children are exposed to danger in the eight hours after school ends -- between 2 p.m., when classes end at kindergartens and elementary schools, and 10 p.m., when many parents return home from work.

He outlined a program in which retirees and housewives whose children have grown up provide supervision in their homes after school for students until their parents come home.

The program would be in addition to existing programs, including municipal-run day-care centers and networks of homes and shops that offer emergency shelter to children along the routes to schools.

According to Shimada, working mothers comprise 63 percent of families in which the youngest child is between 7 and 9 years old, and 70 percent of those where the youngest is between 10 and 12 years old. One-third of these working mothers have full-time jobs, while the others work part time or are self-employed.

Children's safety was thrust into the spotlight with the separate murders of two 7-year-old girls, one in Hiroshima in late November and the other in Tochigi earlier this month. Both were slain while going home from school.