Japan accepts 10,000 Vietnamese nurses to work
The Japanese government has agreed to invite 10,000 nurses from Vietnam to work from now until 2020 to deal with the serious shortage of human resources in the country's nursing industry.
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| Vietnamese nurses trained in Japan. Source: asia.nikkei.com |
Initially, Japan plans to accept 3,000 nurses within one year, with financial support from Tokyo for language training, and then expand the scale to 10,000 nurses within two years.
By setting a target for the number of caregivers, the Japanese government hopes to speed up preparations.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday instructed his cabinet to begin making arrangements to accept more foreign workers. Tokyo is working to set similar targets with Indonesia, Cambodia and Laos.
Japan and Vietnam are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding this year as part of the "Asia Human Health Initiative," a Japanese government program aimed at providing aging societies in Asia with Japan's knowledge and expertise in nursing and social welfare.
Japan began accepting Vietnamese workers in the nursing field in November 2017 under an expanded technical intern training program, through which nurses will also be sent to Japan.
Workers who can speak conversational Japanese to a certain level can be granted residency for up to five years. The government will create a new program that will allow those who have completed technical training to stay in Japan for another five years.
However, the number of workers who can actually take advantage of this technical course for nursing activities is very small, due to strict language requirements that require increased spending on training.
Program participants would have to return home if their Japanese communication skills did not reach a certain level within the first year, making coming to Japan too costly.
Under the new program, Japan will subsidize language training and work with companies that train caregivers to help the elderly maintain their independence. These workers will be paid the same as Japanese workers.
Initially, the Japanese government will accept 3,000 workers through 12 designated Japanese companies as technical interns. The Vietnamese government will also allow six agencies to send skilled workers abroad.
Caregivers from abroad currently come to Japan to work under economic partnership agreements. Between 2008 and 2017, a total of about 3,500 caregivers from abroad came to Japan. The addition of 3,000 caregivers will nearly double that number.
The Japanese government is currently relying on a technical training program to accept foreign workers, as budget constraints limit its ability to accept more workers through economic partnership agreements.
In 2015, Japan’s nursing care industry was short about 40,000 workers, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Taking in another 10,000 workers would only narrow the gap to just over 30,000.
The shortage is expected to worsen in the future, soaring to 790,000 workers by 2035. The government's nursing home construction plans from fiscal 2015 to fiscal 2017 are only 70 percent complete, largely due to a lack of manpower.
Amid fierce competition for labor, South Korea has also set quotas for attracting foreign workers. While Japan is seeking to do the same by setting numerical targets, it remains unclear whether it will be able to increase the number of foreign workers, given some residency requirements, including language proficiency./.
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