Health Ministry Upset by LDP-Drafted Govt Reorganization Plan

September 14, 2018

Tokyo- A sense of mistrust is growing among bureaucrats at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare toward the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's administrative reform headquarters, which has recently drawn up recommendations for reorganization of the central government.

In the recommendations adopted last week, the LDP headquarters noted that the ministry is facing "extremely heavy" workloads as the significance of its missions is rapidly increasing.

The party panel mentioned the need to consider separating child care polices from the ministry's responsibility or split the ministry itself.

The move reflects frustration within the LDP caused by a spate of scandals at the ministry that have had repercussions for the entire government.

A mess over public pension records shook the government during the first term of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which lasted only a year through September 2007.

After Abe returned to power in December 2012, irregularities in labor survey data came to light earlier this year, forcing his administration to abandon a planned labor system reform program.

Meanwhile, the ministry has not been the only source of trouble for the Abe administration, which was battered by the revelation earlier this year of document manipulation at the Ministry of Finance.

"The MOF should be the first to be reorganized as it undermined trust in the government," a senior official of the health ministry argued. "We are enslaved at work. What we need is not reorganization, but more workers."

The LDP recommendations, however, did not seem to spare much thought for the MOF, only regarding as desirable the independence of the Financial Services Agency from the ministry, which is already a reality.

"It's not fair that (the recommendations) didn't mention the document manipulation issue," the health ministry official claimed.

The official suspected that behind the lack of reference to the document scandal is House of Representatives lawmaker Keisuke Suzuki, a former MOF official, who led the work to compile the LDP recommendations.

"Maybe he gave consideration to the MOF, which he hails from, and the prime minister's office, which doesn't want the document falsification controversy to be rekindled," the official said.

Senior officials at other ministries and agencies are also casting suspicious eyes at the LDP administrative reform headquarters, headed by former Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akira Amari.

Amari, who has resigned from the ministerial post over a money scandal, "may have aimed to make the recommendations as a step toward his comeback to center stage," a senior agency official said. Jiji Press