A Japanese government panel plans to propose scrapping the country's controversial trainee program for foreigners and creating a new system to address issues related to human rights violations, a draft interim report showed Monday.
The new system, according to the draft, should clearly state it is intended to "secure" and "develop" human resources, unlike the existing program, which only mentions the latter despite it, in practice, often being used as a means to obtain workers in the face of the nation's graying population and severe labor shortages.
As of the end of 2022, around 325,000 foreign technical trainees were enrolled in the program to transfer knowledge and skills to developing countries from Japan.
Established 30 years ago, it has been criticized for simply allowing companies to import cheap labor and has received multiple allegations of trainee abuse.
With the government planning to base the new system on conclusions from the 15-strong expert panel of academics and local government heads, its launch could mark a new turning point for accepting foreign workers. The panel aims to compile an interim report as soon as the end of April and finalize it by fall 2023.
In calling for the current program to be abolished, the panel's draft said it is "undesirable to continue accepting (trainees) as workers while saying that the program's only goal is human resources development."
Speaking to reporters, Japan International Cooperation Agency President Akihiko Tanaka, who heads the panel, said as many businesses have "no choice but to rely heavily on the labor of foreign trainees," it is important to "create a new system that takes the good parts of the program, rather than scrapping the entire thing."
The draft also calls for enabling workers to change their job within the same business categories. Technically, those in the foreign trainee program cannot transfer to different workplaces.
Tran Duc Huy, a Vietnamese former trainee who left Japan after fleeing an abusive employer that the program locked him into, praised the proposals to ease rules on changing jobs. Now eyeing a return to Japan, he called for full support and said it would be "reassuring" if the new system provided "trustworthy consultation services."
The panel also aims to ensure trainees can transition smoothly into the separate, "specified skilled worker" program introduced in 2019 by aligning job categories and allowing them to shape long-term careers in Japan.
Reports of pregnant trainees being forced to give up their jobs have also raised public awareness of the program's problems.
Despite the planned changes, supporters of the trainees are concerned the old technical internship program will continue in practice because the proposed new system keeps the supervising organizations that currently oversee introducing technical interns and providing assistance to them and their employers.
The draft, however, acknowledges that many organizations have not prevented abuses against the trainees and underscored the need for such organizations to be corrected or eliminated.
Japan introduced the internship program in 1993, primarily for the agriculture and manufacturing sectors, with trainees permitted to work for up to five years, but it has garnered domestic and international criticism for human rights violations such as physical abuse and the withholding of wages.
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