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Munitions firm staff work at DA for 100,000 yen a day

The Defense Agency makes munitions companies dispatch their staff to the Agency, and pays the companies an average of 100,000 yen per person per day as a "daily wage."

This was revealed at the March 30 House of Councilors Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting by Japanese Communist Party representative Ogata Yasuo who took up the aberrant relations between the DA's Technical Research and Development Institute and munitions firms.

The Defense Agency has been implementing, since the 1950s, a system to financially support munitions firms in return for "leasing" researchers and other employees from those companies to support its research and development of military systems and equipment.

At the committee meeting, DA Counselor Sasaki Tatsuro said that in FY 2004, the agency took in a total of about 28,000 employees from corporations ranking in the top five for "labor lease," including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, and paid them 2.9 billion yen in total as "daily wages," which is equivalent to more than 100,000 yen per person per day.

Between fiscal 2000 and 2004, the top 19 munitions firms (in the amount of contracts with the agency) dispatched more than 170,000 employees to the agency and received 19.3 billion yen. It is revealing that the same corporations rehired 311 retired DA officials.

Ogata stressed that the cozy ties between bureaucrats and corporations must be investigated, and DA Director General Nukaga Fukushiro promised to conduct investigations.
- Akahata, March 31, 2006