Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - With a rapidly aging populationand declining fertility, Japan had to adopt a more open-door approach towardsforeign workers to staff its labour-strapped industries, with Vietnameseworkers among the fastest growing groups.

The country’s previously strict approach to immigrationchanged in June as the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, led by PrimeMinister Shinzo Abe, officially announced a set of measures to increase theflow of labour to the country, including the creation of “a new visa status fornon-professional foreign labourers,” the Japan Times reported.

New policies would allow apprentices to remain in Japan for amaximum five additional years under a labour visa after their standardthree-year training. The Japanese Government said it was also consideringletting these visa-holders stay in Japan indefinitely if they pass languageproficiency and technical skills tests during their five-year sojourn.

In a bid to offset a serious dearth of human resources inlabour-intensive fields, such as farming, construction, shipbuilding, andelderly care, Japan wants to bring in as many as 500,000 overseas workers by2025.

To reach this goal, the country has also relaxed its demandsfor language proficiency for these low-skilled jobs – instead of N4 (the secondlowest level in the Japanese proficiency tests), now workers are only requiredto understand basic sentences and utterances.

It is estimated that by April next year, the respectiveassociation of each trade – farming, construction, caretakers, hospitality andshipbuilding – would complete their own specialised exam.

According to Nguyen Gia Liem, deputy head of Vietnam’s Centreof Overseas Labour (COLab) under the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and SocialAffairs, in 2015, there were 27,010 Vietnamese workers sent to Japan, but injust two years, the number doubled to 54,504 in 2017.

Currently, there are about 126,000 Vietnamese trainees andapprentices working in Japan, making Japan one of the main recipients ofVietnamese ‘exported’ labourers.

Liem told Nong thon ngay nay (Countryside Today)newspaper that while demands for Vietnamese workers from markets like theRepublic of Korea or Taiwan remain stable, Japan’s demands are growing “by theday, in increasingly diverse sectors.”

Starting from the beginning of August, the minimum salary foroverseas workers in Japan has reportedly risen from JPY789/hour to JPY823/hour,which makes Japan an even more attractive destination for Vietnamese workers.

“Aside from demand for low-skilled labour, Japan has plentyof positions for skilled and highly trained technicians and engineers inspecial programmes with attractive benefits,” he said.

“The Japanese labour market will be quite lively in thefuture, especially given that the country needs a large amount of manpower toprepare infrastructure and services for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo,” hesaid.

The country is also lifting its long-held ban on foreignfarmers in ‘national strategic areas’ such as Niigata, Kyoto and Aichiprefectures, however, the foreign farmers must possess certain levels ofexperience and practical knowledge, in addition to a command of Japanese.

Niiaga city, for example, is also asking for manpower inhospitality, comic or manga, and beauty industries.

While agreeing that Japan’s new policy is a goldenopportunity, Pham Do Nhat Tan, Vice Chairman of the Government agency Vietnam Associationof Manpower Supply (VAMAS), said that the labour agencies, businesses andVietnamese workers themselves need to “overcome long-standing issues.”

“We need to remember that Japan’s policy is relaxed toworkers from all foreign countries, which means competition would be quitestiff. Vietnamese workers need to equip themselves with fair command ofJapanese and English, technical skills, and most importantly, labourdiscipline,” Tan said.

Doaan Mau Diep, deputy labour minister, said at the beginningof June this year, the ministry has permitted six businesses in northern Vietnamto pilot recruitment of caretakers and nurses to be sent to Japan.

The ministry is currently negotiating to reduce the languageproficiency requirements and increase benefits for Vietnamese to a level equalto native workers.

After the negotiations concluded at the end of this month,the ministry would expand the permissions to businesses in the south.

“Vietnam is ready and able to supply manpower in farming,hotel services or high-rise building maintenance jobs. In addition, we agreedto let Japan’s human resource centres cooperate with Vietnamese counterparts torecruit skilled Vietnamese IT technicians,” deputy minister Diep said.

Vietnamese nurse trainees, for example, were particularlypreferred by the Japanese since the rate of training course graduation reachedas high as 80-90 percent.

However, several challenges stymied the departure ofVietnamese trainees to Japan – workers’ illegal residence and legal infractionshurt the Vietnamese reputation, in addition to risks of workers’ breakingcontracts (although this last issue is partly due to the arduous and unhygienicnature of the caretaking jobs, both Vietnamese and Japanese authorities haveadmitted).

VAMAS’ Tan also wanted the labour ministry tofocus more resources into monitoring and inspecting the labour export agencies,to make sure that duplicitous ones are weeded out.

COLab recently warned against the scams, where someindividuals and agencies claimed they are qualified ‘intermediaries’ that canhelp workers go to Japan via Japan’s International Manpower DevelopmentOrganisation (IM Japan) programme.

Pham Thi Ngoc Lan, deputy head of COLab, said the centre wasthe singular Government agency co-operating with IM Japan to send workers toJapan and it was not in collaboration with any private labour agencies.-VNS/VNA