TOKYO, 21st May, 2024 (WAM) -- Japan's House of Representatives on Tuesday cleared a bill to reform the existing foreign trainee programme that will encourage foreign workers to stay longer through a new system amid a serious labour shortage in the aging country, Japanese news agency Kyodo News reported.
The current Technical Intern Training programme was introduced in 1993 as a way to transfer skills to developing nations.
The new programme aims to develop foreign trainees over three years to a level where they can shift to the specified skilled worker system, launched in 2019, that allows for stays of up to five years with the potential for obtaining permanent residency.
The envisioned law outlines its goal as "nurturing and securing foreign talent," enabling foreign workers to move to different workplaces within the same business area under certain conditions, provided they have worked in one place for more than a year.
The bill sponsored by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's government is expected to pass the House of Councillors during the ongoing parliamentary session through 23rd June. If enacted, the new legislation will take effect within three years of its promulgation.
In order to eliminate malicious brokers, the bill prohibits the involvement of private companies in the transfer process. Supervising organisations accepting foreign trainees will be required to appoint external auditors to improve neutrality.
As of the end of 2023, the number of specified skilled foreign workers jumped 59.2 percent from a year earlier to around 208,000, while trainees under Japan's technical internship programme grew 24.5 percent to about 404,000, the Immigration Services Agency said.
The number of foreign nationals residing in Japan hit a record high of over 3.4 million last year, but Japan's population fell by 595,000 from the previous year to 124.35 million as of 1st October, marking the 13th consecutive year of decline.