Japan Press Weekly

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2017 January 25 - 31 [POLITICS]

JCP: Tokyo governor partially reflects citizens’ demands in her budget draft

Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko on January 25 published a budget draft for FY 2017 which partially meets the demands of the Japanese Communist Party and concerned citizens, such as “zero” children waiting to enter public nurseries.

In the proposed 13 trillion yen budget, the size of the general account budget is about seven trillion yen.

The amount of money allocated to the welfare and healthcare fields increased by 34.9 billion yen to 1.2 trillion yen, up 3% from the previous year. The Tokyo government plans to raise childcare workers’ monthly wages by 21,000 yen as part of measures to be taken to achieve a “zero waiting list”. The metropolitan government also seeks to provide daycare services to an additional 70,000 children over the next four years.

The education budget includes the cost of introducing a grant-type scholarship program for public high school students. The budget will also be used to expand the existing scholarship program for private high school students. The expanded program will enable students from families making less than 7.6 million yen a year to receive education free of charge.

Secretary General of the JCP Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly members’ group Oyama Tomoko issued a statement, and said, “In the governor’s budget plan, budget allocations in areas of welfare and education reflect public demand and JCP proposals.”

In the statement, Oyama urged the governor to revise her draft as she slashed the budget needed to build more public nursing-care facilities while maintaining the budget for non-urgent and non-essential public works projects.