The purpose of technical intern training program introduced in 1993 is to help countries that basically receive ODA support from Japanese government to enhance their technology level on a certain industry.
This is called “technical transfer” , which is transferring knowledge and skills acquired through internship program by young candidates leading the next generation of the country in order to contribute to revitalizing their countries’ economic development.
However, the real aim of companies that accept interns is to take measures against shortage of workers. The aim of interns is also realistically to earn and send money to their family in their countries.
After this program established, disappearance and labor problems happened one after another and Japan came under harsh criticism from UN, ILO (International Labor Organization) and the United States as this program formed a hotbed of human trade.
In response to this, Japanese government re-established new technical intern training program. According to the previous law, article 3, paragraph (2) of technical intern training law originally says “technical intern program must not be taken advantage of by adjustment of the amount of labor.” It is said that the reason the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare includes this letter is because if recruitment and securing labor had become one of the primary purpose of this law, this program would have become the one only considering the advantage to Japan side. So this part has been inherited as unspoken agreement.
Nursing care industry increases interest in this new technical intern training program because the category of occupation “nursing industry” was newly added. Companies involved with this industry that are suffering serious difficulty of labor shortage expect the possibility of increase labor through this program although the new law is still against the purpose of securing labor but its primary purpose is to transfer technology.
The main source of labor supply for nursing care industry is from nursing care training school, There are 237 educational institutions in total that has a course of nursing training program all over Japan. However, average student-to-space ratio is less than 50% . Nursing care industry have no longer hope for securing labor in only domestic labor market and cannot help turning its eyes on technical intern training program for last hope.
The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare concentrates on doing awareness building for this new intern program but it is unclear how well it works for nursing care industry to improve the circumstances.
UN and United States Department of State have warned this program as hotbed of human trade. For example, on July, 2014, United Nations Human Rights Committee indicated frequent occurrence of sexual exploitation, fatal accident and forced labor under harsh circumstances of intern program.
In June, 2017, the Department of State of the United States reported the Japanese government didn’t recognize whoever participated in technical intern program as victims of human trade in spite of frequent warning announcement from NGO and didn’t prosecute people involved with this in terms of the possibility of offense of human trade aimed for labor exploitation.”
There are two types of acceptance of trainees which are ” indepedent type” accepting trainees as workers of a subsidiary office of a Japanese company or a joint venture company established in a country that has trainees , and “group management type” that a
Japanese supervision organizations (non profit organization like business cooperative association, Chamber of Commerce) mediates trainees introduced by human sending organization of a country that has trainees to a company of training practitioner and a the company employ those trainees. The latter one is the majority case.
Acceptance companies’ illegal situation is not till improvable in spite of persistent international criticism. It turned out to be against the Labor Standards Act that 4004 acceptance companies rated 70% of total 5672 companies having inspected by the Ministry of Health、Labour and Welfare in 2016.
Acceptance companies’ illegal situation is not till improvable in spite of persistent international criticism. It turned out to be against the Labor Standards Act that 4004 acceptance companies rated 70% of total 5672 companies having inspected by the Ministry of Health、Labour and Welfare in 2016.
Content of Violation
Violation contents | The number of companies | Ratio |
---|---|---|
Working hours | 1384 | 23.8% |
Safety Standard | 1384 | 23.8% |
Nonpayment of wages | 771 | 13.6% |
Hygiene Standard | 531 | 9.4% |
New technical intern program regulate becoming supervision organization for this program is on license system to run as a candidate and becoming training practitioner is also on notification system to run as a candidate to participate in this technical intern program for the purpose of protecting interns from exploitation.
The Japanese government strengthened penal regulations against fraud. Penalties have been strengthened from “Suspension of acceptance of trainees”, “Guidance for reform”, “Warning”, to “Rescission of permission or license”, “Business Suspension Orders”, “Order for improvement”. The name of supervision organization and training practitioner must be disclosed in public.
In addition, the Japanese government concluded “Memorandum of cooperation on technical intern program” with counterparty governments to exclude “human sending organizations” that collect diposit from trainees via brokers. It already concluded with Vietam and Cambodian government.