Japan`s public sector moving to cope with unemployment problem

TOKYO, Jan. 7 Kyodo -
Japan's public sector has begun taking various measures to cope with the
rapidly deteriorating employment situation, with the farm ministry announcing
Wednesday new job opportunities at farms for unemployed people and a number of
municipal governments including Tokyo offering help for jobless people.
Officials at the labor ministry, meanwhile, disclosed a punitive policy under
which the ministry will publicize the names of companies retracting job offers
to students so as to prevent malicious cases in which students are deprived of
future prospects.
These moves come at a time when an increasing number of companies in Japan are
dismissing employees, particularly nonregular workers, amid the fallout from
the global economic downturn.
Some of the dismissed workers have lost not only their jobs but also a place to
live as they have had to move out of accommodation provided by their employers.
About 500 such homeless people spent the New Year holiday period at a temporary
tent village set up by volunteers in a Tokyo park and became a symbol of a new
social phenomenon in the ongoing economic deterioration.
A recent government estimate showed that more than 85,000 nonregular workers
will have lost their jobs in the period between last October and March this
year.
On the part of the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry, officials said
that 109 agricultural corporations across Japan are offering a total of 379
regular and part-time jobs during January and February.
Though the number of job offers is small, the ministry's move is apparently
intended to encourage a shift in the workforce from the struggling
manufacturing sector to the agricultural sector, which is troubled by a
shrinking and aging farming population, observers say.
Officials of the Tokyo metropolitan government also said Tokyo will launch a
program in fiscal 2009, starting in April, to provide the full amount of
tuition for some 1,000 jobless residents in the capital to obtain the level-two
home-helper certificate. About 800 million yen will be allocated for the
program in the metropolitan government's budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
The program is designed to solve the jobless problem and the labor shortage
problem in the medical and nursing care service sectors simultaneously, the
officials say.
The Yokohama municipal government also announced a plan to employ up to 500
people who have lost jobs recently as temporary municipal government workers.
The governments of Ehime Prefecture and the city of Nara announced similar
plans.
The deepening economic slump has led a number of companies to retract job
offers they made to students who expect to graduate this spring.
To prevent malicious cases, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry plans to
disclose the names of companies that cancel job offers to students as early as
this spring, if certain criteria are fulfilled, ministry officials said.
The names of the firms will be published as a form of punishment if they cancel
job offers for a second straight year, rescind 10 or more offers in a year,
fail to indicate their business difficulties, specify no reason for
cancellation or provide no help for affected students in finding alternative
employment, they said.
A company that has retracted 10 or more job offers in a year may not be liable
for such disclosure if it secures alternative jobs for affected students, they
said.
==Kyodo