Japan Press Weekly

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2008 October 1 - 7 [WELFARE]

JCP Ichida criticizes pension administration

It has been learned that the amount of pension benefits for over one million people may have been calculated lower than they actually should be because employees’ monthly incomes, which are used as a benchmark to calculate their pension premiums, were falsified at the Social Insurance Agency.

The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare on October 6 established an investigation team made up of lawyers to consider measures to be taken to solve this problem.

At a news conference on the same day, Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi said that the root cause of the falsification of pension premiums records by the Social Insurance Agency is in the “basic stance of the administration, which has no interest in protecting pensioners’ rights and is only concerned about raising premium collection rates.”

Ichida stressed that the government should “disclose the whole picture and identify where the responsibility lies as well as make efforts to avoid further victims.”