The number of foreign workers in Japan topped 1 million for the first time last year as the country looks overseas to offset labour shortages
Representation pic
Representation pic
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Tokyo: The number of foreign workers in Japan topped 1 million for the first time last year as the country looks overseas to offset labour shortages.
Tokyo has moved little on loosening strict rules for foreign workers despite years of calls to crack open Japan's borders to more immigrants. But Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has unveiled a plan to review the rules, saying foreign labour will increasingly be needed, particularly in the booming construction industry ahead of the Tokyo Olympics 2020.
A record 10,83,769 foreigners were working in the country at the end of October, up 19.4 per cent from a year earlier, the labour and welfare ministry said. The number of Chinese workers, topping the foreign labour list, gained 6.9 per cent to some 3,45,000, accounting for nearly one third of the total, it said.
Vietnamese ranked second, jumping 56.4 per cent to some 1,72,000. The ministry said the jump largely reflected an increase in the number of foreign students and highly skilled workers.
The government has now decided to expand the country's industrial training programmes to allow foreign workers to stay five years instead of three. Japan has also revised immigration law to accept more nurses and caregivers to work in the healthcare sector.
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