Japan labor ministry corrects explanation about hearings

January 29, 2019

Tokyo--Japan's labor ministry on Tuesday corrected the number of officials who were directly interviewed by members of a third-party panel investigating irregularities in a monthly survey.

The number was actually 12, not the 20 reported by Yumiko Jozuka, head of the labor minister's Secretariat, at parliamentary meetings on Thursday, the ministry said.

The ministry also said that the remaining 19 of the 31 officials subject to the hearings by the investigative panel were questioned by ministry staff alone.

Ministry staff also questioned all officials covered by separate hearings conducted by a ministry team investigating the survey irregularities before the third-party panel began its probe.

The latest revelations raise further questions about the neutrality of the ministry's investigation into the scandal over survey irregularities, which came to light last month.

Labor minister Takumi Nemoto said at a press conference that the correction was "very regrettable."

He also said the third-party panel has conducted interviews with 40 people in another round of hearings that was launched after the revelations on Thursday that the past hearings with some officials were done by ministry staff, not by the panel.

Meanwhile, informed sources said that the ministry is considering giving up recalculating figures for survey results for 2004-2011 as it has been unable to find necessary data.

The ministry is considering modifying the survey results for the period based on estimates, the sources said.

The ministry is slated to report the plan at a meeting on Wednesday of the internal affairs ministry's Statistics Commission, which oversees government statistics, including the labor survey.

In the scandal, a sampling method was used for companies with 500 employees or more in Tokyo, though the labor survey is supposed to cover all of them.

The irregularities affected the results of wages and other data, leading to underpayments of employment insurance and other benefits. Jiji Press