Pembroke after claiming her three and four-year-old daughters were spanked there. Organiser Ruth Ann Lambe said she was aware of the complaint from Latisha Lekki.

She said: "A child was spanked on the hand once for doing something.

When The Royal Gazette asked her why a young child was being hit, Mrs. Lambe said: "Thank you, I have no more comments,'' before hanging up.

Mrs. Lekki said she did not want to pay for the last two weeks her children were at the nursery because, she claims, they were not being cared for properly.

She said: "I had to leave my job because I had to take my children out of there and there was nowhere else to go. Now I am working again.

"I said to them if you have a problem in controlling them to contact me.

"I stated don't physically correct them. I specified that to the fullest. I don't want anyone physically correcting my children. If they do anything major talk to me and my husband.'' "I paid these people to take care of my children -- that wasn't done.'' Mrs.

Lekki said she had spotted red marks on the backs of her three-year-old's legs.

"I asked her what had happened and she told me the teacher gave her licks because she was tying the shoelaces of another girl when she was supposed to be doing something else.

"For two months before that the four-year-old was screaming profusely when I brought her back home from school. I didn't think anything of it.

"My mother was always asking what was wrong with her -- she would stand at the door and would not move.

"Then I found out the teacher had hit both of them. My husband asked both daughters who said they had been hit a lot of times. I approached the teacher who did it and she said if she had done it she wasn't going to apologise for it.

"I didn't get a written apology or anything. It's a Christian-based nursery -- or it's supposed to be anyway.

Mrs. Lekki said she had complained to the Government in July about the private nursery but had yet to hear anything.

But a Government spokesman pointed out that it wasn't against the rules to smack children.

He said: "There is no stricture on this although in practice its very seldom used.''