KOBE--In a clear violation of the law, foreign citizens who have fled from their technical intern trainee positions are hired by staffing agencies, which dispatch them to work at construction sites.

However, such an increasingly common but illegal practice is benefitting all the parties concerned: the agencies that broker the staffing; the former trainees who have lost their jobs; and the construction companies facing a labor shortage.

In late June last year, a Vietnamese worker at a construction site in Kasai, Hyogo Prefecture, was taken to a hospital by ambulance after suffering from heatstroke.

Prefectural police officers contacted by firefighters, who operate the ambulance services, inspected a photocopy of the worker’s residence card and learned that he had long-term resident status. The worker, however, seldom spoke any Japanese.

Inquiries found the card was a fake and the worker was, in fact, a former technical intern trainee who had gone “missing.”

Subsequent investigations converged on a 44-year-old man, a temporary staffing agent living in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, who hired the Vietnamese worker.

The man was arrested and indicted earlier this year on suspicion, among other things, of violating the Worker Dispatching Business Law by staffing a Himeji-based construction company with five Vietnamese temp workers.

The law says construction sites should not be staffed with temp workers.

That is partly because ambiguity in the chain of command and the location of responsibility could increase the risk of work-related accidents, and partly also because layoffs of temp workers at times of low demand could destabilize employment, experts said.

Investigators said the man constantly kept on his payroll 20 or so Vietnamese who had fled from workplaces that had hosted them as technical intern trainees and dispatched them, as temp workers, primarily to six construction firms based in Hyogo Prefecture.

Some of the temp workers had been sent to sites of public works projects, including the renovation of Suma Aqualife Park Kobe, a municipal aquarium in the prefectural capital.

The man prepared fake residence cards for the fugitive former trainees so they could work and also provided housing to them, the investigators added.

“Workers who have fled from where they previously served as technical intern trainees are easy to handle,” the man was quoted as telling prefectural police when asked why he had hired former trainees on the run. “They work so earnestly because they have nowhere else to go.”

The presence of temp staffing agencies like the man's, in the meantime, has benefitted the fugitive former trainees as well.

“I was much happier than as an intern trainee with a construction company,” a 27-year-old male Vietnamese, who was employed by the Himeji agent sometime around last autumn, told an Asahi Shimbun reporter during an interview while being held at the Himeji Branch Detention House.

He has been found guilty of violating the immigration control law. The man came to Japan as a technical intern trainee last April.

He did manual work nine hours a day for a construction firm in Shimane Prefecture, but he received only 110,000 yen ($833) a month in take-home pay. That was too much work for too little money, so he fled from the workplace.

The man made his way to the Himeji-based staffing agent with the assistance of sources including a Facebook network for Vietnamese residents in Japan.

He was given by the agent a fake residence card that carried a Japanese name.

He worked as many hours as before, but he was now getting 200,000 to 220,000 yen a month, double what he had received earlier.

“I was so happy, because I was now able to send money to my parents’ home,” the man said.

The construction company that accepted the man as a temp worker declined multiple requests from The Asahi Shimbun for an interview.

“We have nothing to say about the matter because we were simply having a staffing agent introduce foreigners to us,” a company official said.

Figures of the internal affairs ministry show there were 4.79 million workers last year in the construction industry, down 240,000 from a decade earlier. The latest two years, in particular, were responsible for a total drop of 150,000 in the workforce.

A survey conducted in January by research firm Teikoku Databank Ltd. showed that 65.6 percent of companies in the construction industry were feeling short-staffed.

“Officials of construction sites, which are understaffed, feel grateful if workers are made available to them,” said one senior investigator. “They should have suspected the residence card of a foreign worker was fake if the card carries a Japanese name but its holder doesn’t speak Japanese. They are likely turning a blind eye to similar cases.”

The law provides no punishment for those who have hired illegal temp workers.

The latest case is by no means the first of its kind in Hyogo Prefecture.

Officials of a Himeji-based construction company, including its head, were charged in 2021 with staffing construction sites with Vietnamese former technical intern trainees who were on the run.

“Many brokers are organizing fugitive Vietnamese and are staffing construction sites with them as temp workers,” the senior investigator said. “What has emerged is but the tip of the iceberg.”

One female volunteer probation officer, who served as a counselor for Vietnamese refugees at the now-defunct Himeji Settlement Promotion Center and stays in touch with Vietnamese residents in the local community, said the parties involved are not apologetic for what they are doing.

“‘What’s wrong with helping those in need?’ is their way of thinking,” the woman, 76, said. “There will be no end to illegal work unless we were to provide work environments that technical intern trainees wouldn’t have to flee from.”

The Himeji Settlement Promotion Center, which provided assistance to Vietnamese refugees, closed in 1996.