The debacle of 50.95 million hard-to-identify pension premium payment records has worsened. The Social Insurance Agency is expected to be able to somehow identify about 11 million records. But it has now been disclosed that it will be extremely difficult to identify some 19.75 million records — about 38.8 percent of the total.
The Abe and Fukuda administrations had been saying that the government would finish the identification work by the end of March 2008, and that the work would continue until "the last person" is identified and the "last yen" is correctly paid. People have taken these words as a public pledge. The new revelation will further deepen their distrust of the nation's pension system.
Government leaders must reflect on their having hastily made such a pledge on an issue that is extremely difficult to resolve. The government must do its utmost, including taking necessary budget measures, to complete the identification work. At the same time, it must frequently disclose information about the progress of the work.