Former aged care worker who admitted throwing old man from fourth-floor balcony of nursing home is suspect in 2 similar deaths
The man was first arrested after cash went missing from the purse of another elderly resident
Hayato Imai has yet to have his day in court to explain why he picked up the elderly resident of the nursing care home where he worked and threw him over the balcony to his death, but experts here warn that Japan has created a generation of under-skilled, under-appreciated and under-paid workers.
And they are taking out their frustrations on the generation that most need their help: the nation’s burgeoning population of old and infirm.
Imai, 23, has reportedly admitted throwing 87-year-old Tamio Ushizawa from the fourth-floor balcony of a residential home in the city of Kawasaki, south of Tokyo, operated by nursing care service company Message Co.
“I did it to kill (him),” Imai was quoted as telling the police about the death of Ushizawa after his arrest on Monday.
Ushizawa was killed in November 2014 and was one of three elderly residents to die in similar circumstances in the space of two months.
An 86-year-old woman died after plunging from the same balcony as Ushizawa a little over a month later, while a female resident aged 96 fell from a sixth-floor balcony on New Year’s Eve in the same year.
Imai, who has not been charged in connection with those deaths although police are questioning him on suspicion of involvement. Police told Kyodo that Imai was present at the home when all three deaths occurred.
The suspect was questioned early in the investigation but denied having anything to do with the deaths. Police were only able to arrest him in May after Y25,000 (HK$1,699) in cash went missing from the purse of another female resident. He was fired from the facility shortly after.
Abusive treatment of residents was also found at the facility following an inspection by Kawasaki city.
The fear is that more disgruntled workers are being left in charge of elderly and weak people who reaped the benefits of Japan’s economic bubble years of the 1980s and should be enjoying their twilight years.
“With Japan’s population ageing this rapidly, more and more people are needed in the medical and care sectors, but government reforms are making it harder than ever for these young people to earn a living,” said Makoto Watanabe, a lecturer in communications and media at Hokkaido Bunkyo University.
The minimum wage in Japan averages Y780 (HK$53) an hour, among the lowest in the developed world, and an estimated 3.2 million of the nation’s 66 million workers are getting by on that amount.
Late last year, the Japanese government announced that it was raising the minimum wage by 3 per cent, a move that it confidently expected would increase spending by the public. That decision came 18 months after the consumption tax was increased by 3 per cent, however, effectively negating the wage hike.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has also insisted that he will push ahead with the second phase of the tax hike next year, raising it a further 2 per cent to 10 per cent. That means that anyone on the minimum wage will effectively be 2 per cent worse off.
“Working in this sector was already poorly paid, but the government has just made it even more poorly rewarded,” Watanabe said.
“People in this sector are very upset and they are beginning to move out of these jobs because they just can’t survive on that sort of pay,” he said, adding that the situation is particularly galling for university graduates who have been unable to find work in their chosen area of study.
“Young people are becoming desperate; they cannot see anything positive in their future and they feel no sense of job-satisfaction or reward for the work that they do - and which can be very difficult,” Watanabe said.
“To me, this is a very worrying situation,” he added. “There are more and more old people who need care but not enough young people willing to take those jobs because the pay and conditions are so terrible,” he said. “The government needs to face up to this reality very soon.”
Additional reporting by Kyodo
