Japanese Govt to aim at hiring 4,000 disabled workers in FY19

Jiji Press reprinted in The Japan News

October 19th 2018

TOKYO — The government plans to set a goal of having its ministries and agencies hire a total of some 4,000 people with disabilities in fiscal 2019, it was learned Friday.

The plan follows the revelation earlier this year that central government entities had padded their numbers of disabled workers.

The Japanese government is expected to conduct its first unified employment examination targeting disabled people next January or February, in an effort to raise the proportion of workers with disabilities to 2.5 percent, the legally required level for central government bodies, by the end of fiscal 2019, informed sources said.

Private companies and public institutions are obliged by law to employ certain proportions of disabled workers.

But it has been found that the actual number of disabled workers in the entire government fell some 3,400 short of the number needed for meeting the legal standard as of June last year following the revelation that many government entities had overstated their numbers of such workers.

The planned unified employment exam will be carried out separately from regular exams for hiring national public servants, according to the sources.

Specifically, paper tests will be conducted by the National Personnel Authority in the first stage, and applicants who pass them will advance to interviews to be held at each ministry and agency, the sources said.