Workplace Injuries, Deaths Of Foreigners In Japan Top 6,000 For First Time

TOKYO, Nov 30 (Bernama-Kyodo) -- The number of foreign workers in Japan injured or killed in work-related accidents topped 6,000 in 2024 for the first time, according to government data, as the greying country increasingly turns to foreigners to fill its labour shortage, Kyodo News reported.

The figure has been rising annually since 2019, when the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare adopted its current tally method. The figure then was just below 4,000.

"Insufficient safety training and communication gaps are believed to be behind (the upward trend)," a ministry official said.

According to the ministry, of the approximately 2.3 million foreign workers in Japan in 2024, a total of 6,244 were either seriously injured enough to require four or more days off work, or they died. Deaths also reached a record of 39.

By residency status, long-term residents, permanent residents and spouses of Japanese nationals topped the list at 2,283, followed by workers under Japan's technical internship programme at 1,874 and so-called specified skilled workers at 810.

Japan's Technical Intern Training Program has been in place since 1993 to ostensibly improve the technical skills of foreign workers from developing nations. The programme has been criticised as primarily a mechanism for importing cheap labour.

The Specified Skilled Worker scheme, meanwhile, was launched in 2019 to bring in foreigners already equipped with the skills to begin work immediately without undergoing training in Japan.

Most of the work-related injuries and deaths occurred among those in the manufacturing industry at 2,979, followed by construction at 1,165.

By type of incident, the largest group of 1,441 involved cases of workers getting caught between or in machinery, followed by falls at 797.

The rate of work-related accidents per 1,000 workers, including Japanese nationals, stood at 2.35, but rose to 2.71 when narrowed down only to foreign workers. The rate was notably high among technical interns at 3.98 and specified skilled workers at 3.91.

Vietnamese accounted for the highest number of incidents at 1,594, followed by Filipinos at 878, Indonesians at 757, and Brazilians at 673.

The labour ministry aims to reduce the accident rate per 1,000 foreign workers to below the national workforce average and have at least half of workplaces providing accident-prevention training and translated resources by 2027.

Yoshihisa Saito, an associate professor at Kobe University who specialises in laws on foreign workers, warned of the growing risks of work-related accidents involving foreigners, with technical interns and skilled workers often employed in jobs deemed dangerous.

"I think the reality is that they are being accepted with limited Japanese language proficiency," he said.

Many may not even be able to apply for workers' compensation without assistance because of the apparent difficulty in understanding labour laws, he said, calling for measures to ensure workers can secure jobs where safety education is properly carried out.

-- BERNAMA-KYODO