The Justice Ministry is set to open additional branches of service centers for foreign residents in fiscal 2010 to provide support in various areas, government sources said Saturday.
The new branches of the facilities, called "one stop centers," will be opened in Nagano and Aichi prefectures, which have increasing numbers of foreign residents or factory workers with Japanese ancestry.
The move brings the total number of such facilities to five. The three existing centers are in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, and in the cities of Saitama and Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture.
As many foreign residents have been affected by employment problems due to the economic downturn, the government is aiming to boost its support for them through such service windows.