Photo/Illutration The room where the civil servant was assigned to work after the fallout over the whistle-blowing. Photo taken June 9. (Go Takahashi)

TABUSE, Yamaguchi Prefecture--A civil servant who blew the whistle on excessive property tax collection here has been ostracized at work and banished to a meaningless position as retaliation.

After the employee came forward to report the misconduct by the town of Tabuse, the salaries of Mayor Koji Higashi and the tax affairs department's manager were slashed.

The whistle-blower was transferred to a department at the town hall where nobody else works.

The official alleges superiors had no grounds to take such action. The person had to work alone isolated from other employees, actions the official contends constitute harassment.

At a Tabuse town assembly meeting on June 9, several members supported the official's claim and agreed that the superiors had abused their authority.

But town hall officials denied they had done anything wrong by reassigning the official.

On April 1, the whistle-blower was moved to a department in the town hall that hadn't been used in 30 years. The tatami mats of the Japanese-style room once used by town residents for community activities were partly removed so the official's desk could be placed there.

The fortysomething person is now tasked with compiling historical documents related to the town, which has a population of 14,700.

While working at the tax affairs department in May 2018, the civil servant found out that the town had been over-collecting property tax. Despite reporting the finding to senior managers, no investigation was conducted, leading the official to report the matter to the town assembly.

The town cut the pay of the mayor and department manager at the tax affairs department over the report in September 2019, after the whistle-blower was transferred out of the tax department in August 2018 and then dispatched to a different department in April 2019. 

The whistle-blower’s fiscal 2018 work performance evaluation was marked as zero.

“If a person who did the right thing is retaliated against like this, other employees won’t say anything in the future,” the official said.

The mayor insisted at a June 9 town council meeting that he had no intention of isolating the whistle-blower or severing ties with colleagues.

But Shogo Hino, a professor of sociology specializing in the protection of whistle-blowers at Shukutoku University said, “Forcing the official to take a job where they have nothing to do all day is organized harassment and completely unacceptable.”

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