|
TOKYO: Sixteen Asian workers on training schemes in Japan have died
within 12 months of health conditions linked to “overwork,”
triggering concerns of widespread labor exploitation, a lawyer said
Tuesday.
Japan has strict immigration rules, but some
companies, especially in manufacturing, have used a loophole to
bring in low-wage foreign workers on “training” schemes under
Tokyo’s foreign assistance program.
As concern has grown about abuses under the
scheme, a government body announced this month that a record 34
workers from Asia, mainly Chinese, had died in aJapan in the
financial year to March.
The Japan International Training Cooperation
Organization, which oversees the nation’s training programs, said
16 trainees had died of heart and brain conditions, five were killed
in work accidents and one had committed suicide.
Abnormal situation
Lawyer Shoichi Ibusuki, a member of a legal
group that has represented trainee workers in cases of alleged
abuse, said that “such a high rate of fatal heart and brain
disease among trainees is just abnormal.”
“Due to the economic recession, companies are
hiring more trainees as cheap labor,” Ibusuki told Agence France-Presse.
“I have seen many cases in which they were forced to work nearly
200 hours of overtime a month.”
Some 177,000 foreigners—mainly from China,
Indonesia and the Philippines—were believed to be in Japan as of
late 2007 with government training programs.
Many of the trainees work on assembly lines,
mainly in the textiles, food processing and machinery sectors, the
lawyer said.
Japan has one of the world’s lowest birth
rates, but it has so far rejected allowing large-scale immigration
of unskilled workers.
-- AFP
|
