Japan Press Weekly

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2007 June 6 - 12 [WELFARE]

Unidentified pension premium payment total could be as much as 20 trillion yen: JCP Koike

Pointing out that pension benefits amounting to about 20 trillion yen could be lost due to the mishandling of pension records, Japanese Communist Party representative Koike Akira at a House of Councilors welfare committee meeting on June 5 demanded that the government make every effort to fulfill its responsibility to solve the issue.

Assuming that each holder of the 50 million unidentified pension records made a payment of only one month, the minimum payment, the total amount would be 3.11 trillion yen and assuming that they made payments for six months on average, the amount could reach 20 trillion yen, according to an estimated calculation Koike presented. The welfare ministry did not deny this calculation.

Citing the “25-Year History of the Social Insurance Agency” published in 1988, Koike revealed that when a new pension management system was introduced in 1997 to integrate past pension records into holder-specific records using the basic pension numbers, the agency had been well aware of the possibility that a number of pension records could remain unidentified.

A Social Insurance Agency official admitted this.

Welfare Minister Yanagisawa Hakuo said, “The government projection at that time was too optimistic.”

“The loss of pension premium payment records amounts to fraud. Many have already died without receiving the pensions that they were entitled to. The government has a heavy responsibility in this,” Koike stated.

Government officials insisted that it would finish the review of 50 million unidentified records within a year, but failed to show any grounds for making such a claim. In addition, they still justified their policy of requiring pension holders to prove they made the premium payments.

Koike criticized the government for shifting the responsibility onto the public who are not to blame. “Dissolving and privatizing the Social Insurance Agency without fixing the problem will make it impossible to assign state responsibility. The government is solely responsible for the problem and must solve the problem by itself,” Koike stated.

Yanagisawa stated, “I apologize for this. The government, the welfare ministry, and the Social Insurance Agency are responsible.”
- Akahata, June 6, 2007