The government plans to scale back its operation at the end of March to resolve the pension records problem, which has seriously eroded people's trust in the nation's public pension system since it was exposed in 2007. With more than 20 million pension records still unidentified, it is inexcusable that the government will leave the task unfinished.

It was during Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's previous stint in office that the sloppy management of pension records by the then Social Insurance Agency came to light. Particularly problematic was the revelation of as many as 50.95 million records of premium payments that were not identified. The pension records debacle was one of the issues that fueled voter distrust in the Liberal Democratic Party-led administrations and eventually led to the 2009 change of government.

In 2007, Abe himself pledged that the government would strive to get to the bottom of the problem until the last pension record was identified. More than six years on and with the LDP back in power, government investigation has resolved only 28.95 million cases, leaving it still unclear to whom the remaining 21.12 million premium payments records belong.