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The sad saga of Japan’s foreign trainee program

Japan has announced a review of its contentious system of hiring overseas workers dating back to 1993
A farmer works a combine as he harvests rice at Kikukamachi Yatani in Kumamoto prefecture on Oct. 5, 2019. Japan seeks overseas working hands for the agriculture and manufacturing sectors under the infamous foreign technical intern program, which is now being reviewed.

A farmer works a combine as he harvests rice at Kikukamachi Yatani in Kumamoto prefecture on Oct. 5, 2019. Japan seeks overseas working hands for the agriculture and manufacturing sectors under the infamous foreign technical intern program, which is now being reviewed. (Photo: AFP)

Published: August 03, 2022 10:10 AM GMT
Updated: September 01, 2022 04:45 AM GMT

Japan is silently preparing to make the greatest revolution in its modern history by automating the service sector while also commencing a full-scale review of its foreign immigration policy.

The Japanese government’s recent announcement hints at the infamous foreign technical intern program that “borrows” work hands from other countries to “teach” them particular skills. The human rights violations and inadequate support for these trainees have consistently emerged during the past many years.

Yoshio, a 62-year-old owner of a Konbini store (mini market) in Osaka, says how it “is harder and harder to find people to work at a part-time job” while his store itself has started to automate many cash registers to be prepared for what’s coming.

What’s coming is already here. You can clearly see the shift by simply making your everyday shopping in Japan.

Just a couple of years ago you would hand the cash to a real person at the mini markets but now you are asked by that same person to put the cash in a machine. It feels weird since the cashier is right there in front of you, but the long-term goal is to make the customer get used to DIY Pay, a mobile wallet application.

“For us, it got kinda boring,” says Adesh, a 23-years-old from Nepal. “We would rather count the money and give the change ourselves than just stand in front of the customer while he interacts with the cash register.”

"Human rights groups have for many years reported abuses in the system"

Adesh is one among the thousands of foreign people who arrive in Japan as students and look for a part-time job to sustain their living in its expensive cities.

But unlike Adesh, there are thousands of ‘unseen’ foreign workers who don’t come with a formal student visa; instead, they get into the foreign trainee program, under which young people from developing countries like Nepal, Philippines, Pakistan, and earlier even China, get hired by local companies as technical interns for a period of three years.

Since the beginning of the program in the early nineties, more than 800,000 people have been employed this way.

Human rights groups have for many years reported abuses in the system, claiming it's nothing less than a scheme with the import of cheap labor as its real goal.

The program was initially designed to find working hands for the agriculture and manufacturing sectors which were the most hit by worker shortages. In many cases, trainees were permitted to work for up to five years in the sectors.

A new law to ensure proper working of the program took effect in 2017 but things didn’t seem to go as planned. A public report from the Immigration Services Agency said as many as 9,052 foreign trainees went missing in 2018 alone, which was nearly double the figure from 2014. That’s the size of a medium Japanese village.

"This is a system that makes it difficult for trainees to create a career path"

Someone or something was behind these missing workers. As Justice Minister Yoshihisa Furukawa recently acknowledged, in euphemistic political language, “this is a system that makes it difficult for trainees to create a career path and is structurally prone to human rights violations.”

One thing that emerged was the lack of information shared with both trainees and employers prior to the start of the internships. Employers did not have a clear idea about what salary was to be paid while the trainees accumulated large debts to gain entry into Japan, pay dormitory rent and buy food.

Furukawa said the panel of experts he helped set up will provide solutions to reform the system that will finally benefit both trainees and the Japanese companies that employ them.

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