Japan Press Weekly

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2014 November 5 - 11 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Stop carelessly seizing bank accounts of people in arrears on public health insurance payments: JCP Koike

Japanese Communist Party parliamentarian Koike Akira on November 6 in the Diet demanded that the government instruct municipalities to refrain from irresponsibly freezing the bank accounts of people in arrears with their payments of national health insurance premiums.

At a House of Councilors Welfare Committee meeting, Koike pointed out that the number of cases where local governments confiscated the money in the bank accounts of public health insurance delinquents increased by more than four times in the last ten years.

The JCP lawmaker said that some municipalities even seize government allowances whose seizure is banned under law, such as pension benefits and child support benefits.

Koike cited a judgment the Hiroshima High Court issued last year. The judgment acknowledged that it was illegal for a prefectural government to take away child benefits paid to a resident in arrear with tax payments.

A Welfare Ministry official admitted that such a seizure is not legal.

Koike said that Gunma’s Maebashi City attached bank accounts of 4,503 among 6,408 people who are in arrears with their payments of public health insurance premiums. Some municipalities seem to be employing this method without considering the delinquents’ circumstances, he stressed.

The official promised to instruct local governments to listen carefully to explanations by people who are late in paying public insurance premiums.