February 10, 2010

Japanese Communist Party representative Yoshii Hidekatsu on February 9 pursued the government’s responsibility for protecting public safety in regard to Toyota’s latest recall.

Pointing out that the number of Toyota’s recalled products has increased in the last 10 years, Yoshii said that this is related to the company’s rapid expansion of production in foreign countries, which has been realized by promoting local procurement of parts and materials, reducing the timeframe for developing new products, changing the status of regular workers into non-regular workers, and cutting unit prices to other Asian countries’ levels.

Yoshii also criticized Japan’s recall system as undermining the government’s responsibility for protecting consumers’ safety, revealing that defective products will not be recalled unless manufacturers report the defect to the government. He demanded that the government require Toyota to publicly release information including the cause of the latest problems and measures needed to properly deal with them.

For the guarantee of drivers’ safety, automobile subcontractors’ skills must be ensured, said Yoshii. “In order to support subcontractors providing automakers with fundamental technology, the government should require major corporations to fulfill their social responsibilities as well as offer financial support to medium- and small-sized companies”, he added.
- Akahata, February 10, 2010