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Japan’s open-door policy for foreign workers - a boon for Việt Nam</h3>
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Update: <span>
August, 13/2018 - 09:00</span>
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A Vietnamese intern working at a factory in Japan. -- Photo Nikkei Asian Review</td>
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<a class="gmail-atitcontentvns" href="http://vietnamnews.vn" title="Viet Nam News">Viet Nam News </a>
<p style="line-height:150%">
HÀ NỘI — With a rapidly aging population and declining fertility,
Japan had to adopt a more open-door approach towards foreign workers to
staff its labour-strapped industries, with Vietnamese workers among the
fastest growing groups.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
The country’s previously strict approach to immigration changed in
June as the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, led by Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe, officially announced a set of measures to increase the flow
of labour to the country, including the creation of “a new visa status
for non-professional foreign labourers,” the <em>Japan Times</em> reported.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
New policies would allow apprentices to remain in Japan for a maximum
five additional years under a labour visa after their standard
three-year training. The Japanese Government said it was also
considering letting these visa-holders stay in Japan indefinitely if
they pass language proficiency and technical skills tests during their
five-year sojourn.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
In a bid to offset a serious dearth of human resources in
labour-intensive fields, such as farming, construction, shipbuilding,
and elderly care, Japan wants to bring in as many as 500,000 overseas
workers by 2025.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
To reach this goal, the country has also relaxed its demands for
language proficiency for these low-skilled jobs – instead of N4 (the
second lowest level in the Japanese proficiency tests), now workers are
only required to understand basic sentences and utterances.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
It is estimated that by April next year, the respective association of
each trade – farming, construction, caretakers, hospitality and
shipbuilding – would complete their own specialised exam.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
According to Nguyễn Gia Liêm, deputy head of Việt Nam’s Centre of
Overseas Labour (COLab) under the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and
Social Affairs, in 2015, there were 27,010 Vietnamese workers sent to
Japan, but in just two years, the number doubled to 54,504 in 2017.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
Currently, there are about 126,000 Vietnamese trainees and apprentices
working in Japan, making Japan one of the main recipients of Vietnamese
‘exported’ labourers.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
Liêm told <em>Nông thôn ngày nay</em> (Countryside Today) newspaper
that while demands for Vietnamese workers from markets like South Korea
or Taiwan remain stable, Japan’s demands are growing “by the day, in
increasingly diverse sectors.”</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
Starting from the beginning of August, the minimum salary for overseas
workers in Japan has reportedly risen from JPY789/hour to JPY823/hour,
which makes Japan an even more attractive destination for Vietnamese
workers.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
“Aside from demand for low-skilled labour, Japan has plenty of
positions for skilled and highly trained technicians and engineers in
special programmes with attractive benefits,” he said.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
“The Japanese labour market will be quite lively in the future,
especially given that the country needs a large amount of manpower to
prepare infrastructure and services for the 2020 Summer Olympics in
Tokyo,” he said.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
The country is also lifting its long-held ban on foreign farmers in
‘national strategic areas’ such as Niigata, Kyoto and Aichi prefectures,
however, the foreign farmers must possess certain levels of experience
and practical knowledge, in addition to a command of Japanese.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
Niiaga City, for example, is also asking for manpower in hospitality, comic or manga, and beauty industries.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
<strong>Not all smooth sailing</strong></p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
While agreeing that Japan’s new policy is a golden opportunity, Phạm
Đỗ Nhật Tân, vice chairman of the Government agency Việt Nam
Association of Manpower Supply (VAMAS), said that the labour agencies,
businesses and Vietnamese workers themselves need to “overcome
long-standing issues.”</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
“We need to remember that Japan’s policy is relaxed to workers from
all foreign countries, which means competition would be quite stiff.
Vietnamese workers need to equip themselves with fair command of
Japanese and English, technical skills, and most importantly, labour
discipline,” Tân said.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
Doãn Mậu Diệp, deputy labour minister, said at the beginning of
June this year, the ministry has permitted six businesses in northern
Việt Nam to pilot recruitment of caretakers and nurses to be sent to
Japan.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
The ministry is currently negotiating to reduce the language
proficiency requirements and increase benefits for Vietnamese to a level
equal to native workers.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
After the negotiations concluded at the end of this month, the
ministry would expand the permissions to businesses in the south.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
“Việt Nam is ready and able to supply manpower in farming, hotel
services or high-rise building maintenance jobs. In addition, we agreed
to let Japan’s human resource centres co-operate with Vietnamese
counterparts to recruit skilled Vietnamese IT technicians,” deputy
minister Diệp said.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
Vietnamese nurse trainees, for example, were particularly preferred by
the Japanese since the rate of training course graduation reached as
high as 80-90 per cent,</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
However, several challenges stymied the departure of Vietnamese
trainees to Japan – workers’ illegal residence and legal infractions
hurt the Vietnamese reputation, in addition to risks of workers’
breaking contracts (although this last issue is partly due to the
arduous and unhygienic nature of the caretaking jobs, both Vietnamese
and Japanese authorities have admitted).</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
VAMAS’ Tân also wanted the labour ministry to focus more resources
into monitoring and inspecting the labour export agencies, to make sure
that duplicitous ones are weeded out.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
COLab recently warned against the scams, where some individuals and
agencies claimed they are qualified ‘intermediaries’ that can help
workers go to Japan via Japan’s International Manpower Development
Organisation (IM Japan) programme.</p>
<p style="line-height:150%">
Phạm Thị Ngọc Lan, deputy head of COLab, said the centre was the
singular Government agency co-operating with IM Japan to send workers to
Japan and it was not in collaboration with any private labour agencies.
—VNS</p>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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