Foreign aged care workers will soon be offered three-year residency under its Technical Intern Training Program.
They need an additional 700,000 care workers over the next 10 years alone. Japans population is shrinking and nobody wants manual for low paid employment.
Japan has had bilateral partnership agreements for aged care workers with Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam that requires training and national certification in Japanese language. This has been a failure with only 203 care workers passing exams since 2008.
The new program will be less demanding on qualifications, simply requiring some Japanese language proficiency.167,000 construction workers have already taken up the three-year residency program. Hair dressers are also being targeted.
