Japan Press Weekly

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2022 December 7 - 13 [POLITICS]

Public hospital workers’ unions protest Kishida gov’t attempt to use hospitals’ reserve funds for military buildup

Public hospital workers’ unions on December 9 held a press conference in the Labor and Welfare Ministry office building in protest against the Kishida government attempt to use reserve funds held in public hospitals to finance its plan to raise military spending to 43 trillion yen.

Prime Minister Kishida Fumio plans to increase Japan’s military budget to 43 trillion yen in five years. The government intends to use 150 billion yen in reserve funds held by national and other public hospitals for the military budget. This was revealed in a report of a government expert panel discussing Japan’s possession of an enemy-strike capability.

At the press conference, Japan National Hospital Workers' Union (JNHWU/Zen-Iro) Secretary General Suzuki Hitoshi said that considering the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals need to maintain sufficient reserves for emergencies, and stressed that the holding of reserve funds is necessary for public hospitals to continue to function in local communities in case of an emergency.

The secretary general of the union organizing workers at Japan Community Healthcare Organization (JCHO) hospitals, Kaneko Masahito, said that public hospitals’ reserve funds should be used to provide better healthcare and nursing-care services to local people, and added the Kishida government’s attempt to use such money for military purposes is totally unacceptable.