By KAZUMICHI KUBOTA/ Staff Writer
September 28, 2024 at 16:27 JST
Cambodian technical intern trainees harvest spring cabbages in a field in Choshi, Chiba Prefecture, in February. (Mika Omura)
The Immigration Services Agency said 9,753 foreign technical trainees went missing in Japan last year, marking an all-time-high.
Of the total, 1,765 were from conflict-ridden Myanmar. The figure was nearly triple the number of the previous year, the agency said Sept. 27.
Trainee status does not allow interns to trade workplaces. Many disappear from the workplace, often citing poor pay and working conditions, and switch to residency status that allows greater employment opportunities.
The agency plans to tighten its regulations.
It said that around 510,000 foreign technical intern trainees were living in Japan in 2023, and 1.9 percent of them went missing.
By nationality, Vietnamese trainees accounted for the largest number of disappearances at 5,481, followed by 1,765 from Myanmar and 816 from China.
The number of missing Vietnamese trainees has remained high, often attributed to harsh working conditions that lead them to abruptly leave their workplaces without giving notice.
The number of Myanmar trainees going missing rose about 2.9-fold compared to the previous year’s 607. The proportion stood at 5.4 percent of all trainees from Myanmar, significantly higher than those from other countries.
In response to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar, Japan has allowed Myanmarese nationals, including technical intern trainees, to extend their stay under a “designated activities” visa, even after their original visas expired.
Since then, more Myanmar trainees have left their workplaces and switched to the designated activities visa, which allows them to work without restrictions on where they can be employed.
The agency believes this is a factor behind the rise in disappearances.
Starting in October, the agency will only permit Myanmarese trainees to switch to the designated activities visa in cases where they can no longer continue their internship due to harassment, company bankruptcy or other reasons, and when transferring to a new workplace is not feasible.
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