Dozens of cities and towns with large numbers of foreign residents called on the central government Wednesday for help in protecting their jobs and supporting them amid the rapidly crumbling labor environment.
In an emergency request submitted to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry and the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry, 26 local governments pointed to the steep rise in unemployment among foreigners as Japanese companies accelerate termination of nonregular workers to deal with the global economic slump.
Foreign workers, including those with Japanese ancestry, are often employed on a temporary basis. Due to the fickle nature of temp work, however, the unstable job market is posing a serious threat to their livelihood, and the two ministries must increase subsidies to firms with foreign workers, they said.
The local governments, including those of Ota, Gunma Prefecture, Ueda, Nagano Prefecture, Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, Tsu, Mie Prefecture, and Konan, Shiga Prefecture, also asked the central government to provide greater support for educating foreign children by, for example, increasing the number of teachers fluent in the kids' native languages.
Phone translators
MAEBASHI , Gunma Pref. (Kyodo) The Gunma Prefectural Government plans to launch a cell phone-based translation program in fiscal 2009 to facilitate communication between teachers and officials in municipalities and the prefecture's growing number of foreign residents, prefectural officials said Tuesday.
The envisaged program would be the first such service in Japan to be organized by a local government, although some nonprofit organizations already provide similar services, according to Gunma Prefecture and other local governments that host large communities of foreign residents, especially Brazilians of Japanese descent.
The prefecture, which has a large manufacturing industry, has seen a surge in foreign residents in recent decades.