Japan Press Weekly

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2012 April 4 - 10 [WELFARE]

Osaka City calls for drastic cuts in public services

Osaka City’s “reform project team” led by Mayor Hahimoto Toru on April 5 published a plan to abolish or diminish more than 400 items of public services for residents.

The plan proposes the abolition or privatization of public facilities, such as halls, sports centers, centers for gender equality, and sports centers for the disabled.

It calls for the abolition of free transportation services for senior citizens, subsidies for meal delivery services for senior residents who are living alone, and exemption programs of water and sewage bills for needy residents, in addition to an increase in national health insurance premiums, and a decrease in lump-sum allowances for childbirth.

Cuts in subsidies are proposed for welfare facilities for elderly people, after-school care facilities for children, the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Bunraku Kyokai (association of traditional puppet theater).

The project team estimates that these measures will help the city save 54.8 billion yen over the next 3 years.

Osaka Mayor Hashimoto said, “Although our tax revenue has declined, ‘luxurious’ public services have continued.”

Japanese Communist Party Osaka City Assembly members called for the withdrawal of the plan in a statement they published on the same day, criticizing the plan as being completely ignorant in regard to residents’ daily living conditions.

The “reform” plan suggests that residents’ centers and indoor pools, which are now installed in all 24 wards of Osaka City, be reduced to just 9. The JCP condemns this as aimed at setting up the conditions for a plan, proposed by Hashimoto’s “Osaka Ishin-no-Kai,” to divide Osaka City into 8 to 9 special administrative wards and transform the city into a greater metropolitan administrative unit just similar to Tokyo.