Foreigners who head to Japan on trainee visas each year end up in what union officials say is tantamount to slavery.
TOKYO: They dream of bringing home a nest egg and advanced technical skills, but many of the tens of thousands of foreigners who head to Japan on trainee visas each year end up in what union officials say is tantamount to slavery.
A system launched in 1990 to help developing countries to benefit from Japanese technology has become a source of cheap labour for small manufacturers and farms that are struggling in the face of a labour shortage and harsh competition from abroad.
“It’s basically human trafficking,” said Ippei Torii, secretary general of the All United Workers Union, which has successfully negotiated the payment of back-wages for scores of former trainees.
More than 83,000 people, mostly Chinese, arrived in Japan as trainees last year, adding to tens of thousands already here, according to the Japan International Training Cooperation Organisation, (JITCO) which supervises the programme.
Many are trapped into working long hours for pitiful pay and are subjected to sexual harassment, union officials say. Returning home before their contract expires is often out of the question, because trainees have mortgaged their homes to fund the trip, while their employers or brokers impound their passports to prevent escape.
A labour standards survey based on unannounced inspections over the 12 months to last March found 80 per cent of companies employing trainees were breaking laws on pay and conditions.
Unfavourable publicity about the ballooning programme spurred the government to set up a committee in October to look into the system, with findings set to be published by the end of March. The abuses were due to the government’s failure to deal with the problems faced by small manufacturing companies, Torii said.
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