- Today, the supplementary budget in the 2001 fiscal year of the total amount of 2,995,500 million yen was approved in the House of Councilors today by support of the governing parties, namely Liberal Democratic Party, the Komei Party, and the Conservative Party. While economy has been falling in minus growth and the unemployment rate is 5.3%, this supplementary budget is wedded to a national loan less than 30 trillion yen and employment measures, such as job creation and promotion of finding of a new job, are insufficient. This cannot reduce an unemployment rate. RENGO protests against having formed the supplementary budget that disregarded the life of such people without any amendment.
- This supplementary budget appropriates 1 trillion yen for "reform precedence program," including 550,100 million yen for employment policy, 251,100 million yen for small and medium-sized enterprises policy, 198,900 million yen for structural reform measure. It also appropriates 49,900 million yen for the measure against urgent terrorism, 313,900 million yen for natural calamities measures, 831,100 million yen for the increase of obligatory cost. The budget is paid by cutting the fixed cost and issuing national bond of 1.7 trillion yen.
In the employment policy, in three years, it is planned to create 500,000 jobs, such as teachers' assistants, assistant polices as forest workers, by the urgent local employment creation special subsidy (350 billion yen). However, these jobs are limited to temporary jobs for less than one year. Moreover, the employment insurance guarantee measure (95,800 million yen) only provides what the treasury should have provided to meet the present increase of recipients of unemployment benefit.
The structural reform measure serves to move up the implementation of realizing the electronic government and electronic self-governing bodies and promoting information technology in school by improving LANs.
- The working people's asking rather than anything now is canceling the uneasiness to employment or the future and finding out a bright hope to the future. In "the employment questionnaire in a job placement office" and the "unemployment consultation dial" which RENGO carried out, workers have made strong request for improving job placement with abolishing the age limit, the government-led job creation, extension of duration of unemployment allowance, the increase in training opportunities, etc. The government must listen to such voices frankly and must cancel uneasiness of employment and the future immediately.
- As RENGO has been claiming, employment measures are the most effective business stimulating measures and what the structural reform should aim. RENGO reiterates that the government must 1) avoid creating additional jobless persons, 2) fulfill its responsibility to create 1.4 million regular jobs needed by the society, 3) carry out occupational training programmes for about 600,000 persons to support job re-employment and 4) extend of duration of unemployment benefit. RENGO will strengthen its effort to ease the sense of insecurity about living and jobs.
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