Japan Press Weekly

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2007 December 12 - 18 [WELFARE]

SIA estimates 20 million pension records as hard to identify

The Social Insurance Agency on December 11 made public its estimate that among some 50 million unidentified pension premium payment records, whose payers have not been identified due to data input mistakes and other types of sloppy work by the agency, about 19.8 million will be hard to identify by using computerized data.

Furthermore, among the 19.8 million records, about 9.5 million are classified as being “quite hard to identify,” the agency said.

Faced with strong public criticism of the pension fiasco, the Liberal Democratic-Komei government in the July House of Councilors election campaign promised that the government will pay all pension benefits to everyone who is entitled to receive them.

However, given the SIA estimate, Welfare Minister Masuzoe Yoichi on the same day said to reporters, “There are things that we cannot do.” He even tried to shift his responsibility onto the public by saying, “There could be misunderstanding on part of the public that the pension problem will be completely resolved before the end of this fiscal year.”

Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo also took a defiant attitude, saying, “Did the government actually state that it will resolve the problem?”

Asked by reporters for a comment, Japanese Communist Party Policy Commission Chair Koike Akira stressed the need to hold the government fully responsible for the matter. “Since the government repeatedly promised that it will pay the pension benefits, what we hear today is a grave breach of their campaign promise,” he said.

Koike pointed out that based on the SIA estimate, many have already died without receiving the pension benefits they were entitled to. “We will have the government make clear what it is going to do about pension benefit payments to the bereaved families,” he said.

Although the pension fiasco surfaced under the former Abe government, because Prime Minister Fukuda as well as Welfare Minister Masuzoe repeatedly said, “To the end,” the Fukuda government must be held responsible, said Koike.

He stressed the importance of a JCP proposal of sending a copy of the pension premium payment records as they are to every insured person as well as to pension benefit recipients.