Donations warrant being called that only when they are offered of the donors’ free will. The same goes for volunteer work.

A growing number of Osaka’s public officials are rightly feeling that they are practically being coerced, or mobilized, to “donate” money and “volunteer,” given that their workplace bosses are soliciting them to do so.

A stir has been created by measures taken by the prefectural and city governments of the western metropolis over parades scheduled to be held Nov. 23, a national holiday, to honor the respective league championships of the Hanshin Tigers and Orix Buffaloes professional baseball teams.

The parades’ executive committee, made up of Kansai-based business organizations, the governments of Osaka and Hyogo prefectures and other parties, is calling for donations.

It says 500 million yen ($3.3 million) must be raised to stage the events at the two venues of Osaka’s main Midosuji Street and the downtown Sannomiya district of Kobe, the capital of Hyogo Prefecture, where members of the baseball teams will change places to parade before the public.

The Osaka prefectural government requested, in a document addressed to prefectural school principals and others, that they notify teachers and other staffers about the fund-raising campaign. The document also says that donations should be at least 3,000 yen and should not be made during office hours.

Prefectural government officials said they also showed a similar document to school workers other than teachers.

In addition, the prefectural and municipal governments of Osaka also each called for 1,500 volunteers to serve as guides for visitors and in other roles on-site.

The prefectural government’s call addressed officials in departments under the direct supervision of the governor. The city government went so far as presenting target numbers of volunteers by department.

The on-site workers will be volunteers in the strictest sense of the word and will not be receiving transportation costs, let alone allowances for working on a holiday.

Bewilderment, suspicion, anger and various other emotional responses have apparently arisen among officials of the prefectural and municipal governments.

Trade unions that represent them have quite rightly dissented and lodged protests.

The Osaka prefectural government should withdraw its document on donations.

Osaka Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura called for broad-based cooperation on Nov. 6 in hopes of propping up the fund-raising campaign, which is nowhere near reaching its target. The document in question was issued the following day.

It is not difficult to imagine that many of the teachers and other school staffers took it as an official request from the governor.

Both the prefectural and city governments of Osaka should redefine the “volunteer” on-site work as official duties and pay allowances and transportation costs to those who engage in it.

In fact, the government of Hyogo Prefecture and the city authorities of Kobe have defined similar work as official duties. Officials who work on-site as volunteers could be left without compensation if they were to be embroiled in trouble.

Fund-raisers for the parades have included the wording “500 days to go before the 2025 Osaka Kansai Expo!” in their title to push the world fair to the fore.

They are likely hoping to break out of the current situation surrounding the international exposition, whereby momentum for staging it has yet to gain steam and difficulties of various sorts abound that provide fodder for discussions.

That linking has also invited a barrage of criticism saying, for example, that expo organizers are piggybacking on the parades and that baseball has been marred by political exploitation.

The ruckus over the donations and the volunteer work has topped all that off.

That will only serve to dampen the Japan Series, the annual showdown of the Central League and Pacific League pennant winners, which was livened up this year because it pitted Kansai-based champions against each other for the first time in 59 years.

Yoshimura has said he wishes to congratulate both teams on their historic feat of winning their league championships.

He should rush to change course if that is all that he has in mind.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 12