Japan Press Weekly

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2012 April 11 - 17 [POLITICS]

1,700 post offices in danger of closure

Akahata editorial (excerpts)

The Lower House on April 11 passed a postal bill submitted jointly by the Democratic, Liberal Democratic, and Komei parties, and discussion on the bill has been moved to the Upper House.

The bill to revise the postal service privatization law may possibly force the closure of about 1,700 local post offices at which postal savings and insurance services are unavailable.

In 2007, the government at that time divided the country’s postal services into 5 private corporations: Japan Post Holdings, Japan Post Service, Japan Post Network, Japan Post Bank, and Japan Post Insurance.

The bill intends to integrate JP Network into JP Holdings.

The present law obliges JP Holdings and JP Service to provide universal access to postal, savings, and insurance services at their post offices.

The bill, however, regards post-related entities not handling savings and insurance as not “post offices”. In short, the bill eliminates these entities from the obligation of providing universal access.

Out of 7,500 post offices being subject to the integration, 1,700 offices do not offer postal savings and insurance services. These 1,700 will be in danger of being shut down.

The bill adversely revises the nationwide network of post offices. The Upper House should kill such a bill through all-out deliberations and help restore public aspects of postal services by ending the present split-ups and requiring universal access to both postal savings and insurance services.