Japanese ‘forced labour’ programme is channel for mainly Chinese immigrants, government admits

As many as 6,000 Asians who have come to Japan under the government’s much-maligned foreign technical trainee programme have absconded from their jobs, apparently in search of better working conditions and pay.

According to the Ministry of Justice, 4,930 people who had been on the foreign technical trainee programme disappeared in the first 10 months of 2015, already surpassing the 4,847 who absconded in the whole of 2014.

In total, around 170,000 foreigners are employed through the Japanese International Training Corporation Organisation, working in industries such as agriculture, textiles, fisheries and construction. An estimated 60 per cent are Chinese, down from a peak of close to 80 per cent.

READ MORE: Japan exploiting Asian guest workers, US State Department report says

Introduced in 1993 as a way of helping workers from developing nations to better their job skills or master new technologies, the programme has been widely criticised as effectively being a source of cheap labour in sectors that are unpopular with Japanese workers.

One of the biggest complaints has been the poor working conditions, along with the low pay – frequently below the national minimum – and employers’ behaviour, such as taking away workers’ passports.

Kyoko Osaka, a lawyer at the Lavinda Law Office in Nagoya, is handling five court cases involving trainees who are suing for failure to receive the national minimum wage.

“I suspect there are several reasons why these trainees are running away,” she told The South China Morning Post. “One condition, undoubtedly, is that their working conditions are very bad.

“Another factor is that they have usually accrued a large debt to get here from their mother country and they are finding it impossible to pay off that debt on such low wages,” Osaka said. “And, of course, that is worse if they are receiving an amount lower than the hourly minimum set by the government.”