It is high time the government faced facts and scrapped its industrial training and internship program because it is used to exploit foreign trainees as a cheap source of labor, a lawyer group said Thursday, claiming the purpose of the system and its reality are worlds apart.

The trainee system is touted as making an international contribution by transferring Japan's industrial expertise to people from developing countries. But in reality, foreign trainees are underpaid and overworked without being given a chance to learn any skills, according to Lawyers' Network for Trainees.

"A drastic review of the program is necessary. . . . The system is functioning to receive cheap unskilled laborers and exploit them," lawyer Lila Abiko, the group's secretary general, said in Tokyo at The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan.