JCP Koike criticizes government panel’s cuts in tax spending for harming labor and medical systems

Japan Press Weekly

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JCP Koike criticizes government panel’s cuts in tax spending for harming labor and medical systems

Japanese Communist Party Policy Commission Chair Koike Akira criticized a government panel’s ongoing attempt to cut wasteful tax spending for leading to a further deterioration of the labor and medical systems.

Condemning the panel for trying to abolish a program to support school graduates’ job hunting endeavors as well as a subsidy given to employers to promote equal treatment between part-timers and regular workers, Koike stressed, “Such measures will distort the very basis of labor administration.”

Koike raised question of the panel’s members, especially Fukui Shigeo, who chaired the labor taskforce of a governmental council for the promotion of regulatory reform under the former government of the Liberal Democratic and Komei parties. The taskforce opposed the call for “equal pay for equal jobs” as well as the increase in minimum monthly wages, and called for further deregulation of the Worker Dispatch Law.

Labor Minister Nagatsuma Akira answered, “I am not in a position to express opinions about the members selected by the panel.” Vice Labor Minister Hosokawa Ritsuo, who used to severely criticize the labor taskforce’s proposals, said, “I’d like to withhold my opinions about individual panel members.”

In medical fields, the panel called for additional burdens to be imposed on patients, including requiring them to pay for meals and beds at hospitals. “It is a brutal cut in medical budgets and will lead to an unacceptable deterioration of Japan’s medical system. The Health Ministry should reject the proposal outright,” Koike urged.

- Akahata, November 18, 2009