Labor Ministry responds to Kun.uz inquiry on sending citizens to Japan for work

Earlier, Kun.uz published an article about how they are trying to arrange a corrupt system in the field of sending workers to Japan, how the mechanism of sending citizens from Uzbekistan to Japan for work in 2020 is organized. The Ministry of Employment and Labor Relations officially responded to this article.

It is noted that more than 600,000 new workers enter the labor market in the republic every year. In order to expand the geography of labor migration, constant negotiations are held with the competent organizations and potential employers of the developed countries of the world, and effective projects are being launched.

According to the ministry, on May 1, 2021, a memorandum of cooperation was signed between the Ministry, the Foreign Labor Migration Agency, Japanese “Nippon Educational Academy” and the NGO “Japanese Language and Vocational Skills Test Center”:

“Based on this memorandum, in order to organize classes on Japanese language and vocational skills in the buildings of “Ishga marhamat” monocenters of the ministry system, the “Nippon Educational Academy” whose founder and head is Dilafruz Ikromova and the “Japanese Language and Vocational Skills Test Center” founded by the academy were allocated free of charge auditorium and educational equipment. Today, the academy’s classrooms in all monocenters are continuing their activities.

The Academy has the opportunity to train an average of 2,500 citizens per year. In order to create additional opportunities for citizens in this regard, from December of this year, Japanese language and vocational training courses were organized in the vocational training centers of the ministry in parallel based on the program developed by the ministry. Information about these training courses and the procedure for going to Japan to work is being covered by the mass media. Today, 382 citizens are involved in these training courses.

Let’s analyze some numbers: 1 billion 265 million 228 thousand soums have been paid to the academy from the account of the State Employment Assistance Fund as of December 1 of this year. A total of 1,053 people (302 people in 2021 and 751 people during 9 months of 2022) were recruited by the Academy for Japanese language and agricultural worker and elderly care profession training. Among them, 255 candidates (185 in 2021 and 70 during 9 months of 2022) completed Japanese language and professional qualification courses and received a certificate from the Japanese educational organization “Nippon Academy”.

However, 196 of the trainees completed their studies, 154 of them were involved in the test exams and 52 received certificates of language proficiency. This is only 5% of the total trainees.

It should be noted that, according to the choice of citizens, referrals to the “Nippon Educational Academy” continue today by labor authorities, and in October-December of this year, referrals were presented to 107 unemployed citizens.

On July 21 of this year, 18 Japanese recruiting organizations with the support of JICA participated in the “2nd labor forum dedicated to the prospects for developing labor relations and professional education between Japan-Uzbekistan”, which was organized at the “Ishga marhamat” monocenter in Tashkent and was fully financed by the Foreign Labor Migration Agency under the Ministry. They made suggestions on promoting the opportunities of the Uzbek labor market in Japan. Within the framework of the forum, cooperation agreement projects approved by OTIT (authorized body in the system of training technical trainees in Japan) were presented to 18 recruiting organizations for consideration, and agreements were signed with 6 of them without any objections. The remaining 12 will be signed as part of the expected visit of ministry officials to Japan. However, as part of the visit to Japan, the JICA noted that new additions to the agreements will be made, and no proposals have been made for these agreements to date.

Also, a general cooperation memorandum was signed with the JICA, and at a bilateral meeting, an agreement was reached on the establishment of a center for protecting the rights and interests of citizens engaged in temporary work in Japan in September 2022. However, according to the agreement, the partner organization did not submit proposals for the state registration of this center in accordance with the Japanese procedure, including the location and operation of the center,” the ministry said.

It was added that, according to the recommendation of the Uzbek Embassy in Japan, in cooperation with the “Nagoya-Uzbekistan friendship society”, the “Center for assisting labor migrants from Uzbekistan and protecting their rights” was established. Based on this, in August of this year, the ministerial working group held negotiations with a number of large employer enterprises in Japan and signed about 20 contracts. On the basis of these agreements, it is planned to organize a system of training an average of 5,000 citizens per year in the Japanese language and professions that are in high demand in the Japanese labor market. At the same time, in cooperation with the JICA, measures were taken to attract Japanese experts as volunteers to the educational institutions of the ministry system.

In order to develop competition and prevent monopoly, the ministry also emphasized the feasibility of cooperating with any business entities that can meet the current requirements for teaching Japanese.