Daycare operators say new safety regulations are costly to implement. (CBC)

Some daycare centres in Manitoba are struggling to comply with a new security policy introduced by the province last month requiring them to keep their doors locked all day.

More than half the daycare facilities in the province operate in shared facilities such as schools, churches and community centres that need to be open to the public.

That's making it very difficult and potentially expensive for some daycares to comply with the new regulations.

Don Giesbrecht of the Assiniboine Children's Centre, which is located inside École Assiniboine, in St. James, estimates it could cost $20,000 to implement a monitoring system on all access doors to the daycare.

"It might have sounded great on paper or in theory," Giesbrecht said of the new security rules. "But when you started getting into the nitty gritty of how does this affect individual programs and what are the ramifications of it for them — that's where I don't think people perhaps looked at it as closely as they should have."

Daycares have until June to come up with a plan but the province says it will take some of those challenges into consideration in implementing the new regulations.