Japan began sending warnings to an estimated 8.5 million people yesterday that their pension data may have gone missing, as the government seeks to clean up a scandal that has damaged its credibility.
The government has acknowledged losing track of pension records linked to 64 million claims.
The disclosure earlier this year ignited a scandal that saw the ruling party lose control of parliament's upper house in July elections and eroded public confidence in the ability of the world's second largest economy to support its growing legions of elderly.
The Social Insurance Agency sent notices linked to about 300,000 claims yesterday, agency official Sueji Miura said. The agency anticipates follow-up mailings through the end of March that will bring the total to around 11 million claims involving 8.5 million people, he said.
Recipients need to verify their pension and related personal information recorded by the government, make any necessary additions or corrections and return the notice along with supporting documents, he said. Those with no changes to make are asked to return an included postcard.
From next April, the government will also send notices to over 100 million people to try to match the remaining 53 million outstanding claims, Miura said.
"We are making and will continue to make every effort to see that each and every person conclusively gets back the pension funds they are owed," Health and Welfare Minister Yoichi Masuzoe told reporters.
The mess helped to drive former prime minister Shinzo Abe out of office and has continued to make life difficult for his successor, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.
Fukuda's government has faced criticism that a failure to resolve the pension problem would be considered a breach of public pledges that the ruling party made during July's electoral campaign.
The Nikkei Shimbun attributed a 12 percentage point drop in the support rate for Fukuda's Cabinet to 43 percent in a poll published yesterday in part to the imbroglio.
No margin of error was provided for the random telephone survey of 870 people.
Pension payment is mandatory for all Japanese aged between 20 and 60. On average, company employees contribute more than 6 percent of their salary and can expect to receive about US$1,450 a month after retirement.
Japan has one of the world's fastest-aging societies -- 21 percent of its 127 million people are 65 or older, and some 25 million retirees are collecting pensions, with the number expected to rise to 35 million by 2040.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
CYBERCRIME, TRAFFICKING: A ‘pattern of state failures’ allowed the billion-dollar industry to flourish, including failures to investigate human rights abuses, it said Human rights group Amnesty International yesterday accused Cambodia’s government of “deliberately ignoring” abuses by cybercrime gangs that have trafficked people from across the world, including children, into slavery at brutal scam compounds. The London-based group said in a report that it had identified 53 scam centers and dozens more suspected sites across the country, including in the Southeast Asian nation’s capital, Phnom Penh. The prison-like compounds were ringed by high fences with razor wire, guarded by armed men and staffed by trafficking victims forced to defraud people across the globe, with those inside subjected to punishments including shocks from electric batons, confinement
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
RSS