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TOKYO - Sixteen Asian workers on training schemes in Japan have died within 12 months of health conditions linked to 'overwork', triggering concerns of widespread labour exploitation, a lawyer said on Tuesday.
Japan has strict immigration rules, but some companies, especially in manufacturing, have used a loophole to bring in low-wage foreign workers on 'training' schemes under Tokyo's foreign assistance programme.
As concern has grown about abuses under the scheme, a government body announced this month that a record 34 workers from Asia, mainly Chinese nationals, had died in Japan in the financial year to March.
The Japan International Training Cooperation Organisation, which oversees the nation's training programmes, said 16 trainees had died of heart and brain conditions, five were killed in work accidents and one had committed suicide.
Lawyer Shoichi Ibusuki, a member of a legal group that has represented trainee workers in cases of alleged abuse, said that 'such a high rate of fatal heart and brain disease among trainees is just abnormal'.
'Due to the economic recession, companies are hiring more trainees as cheap labour,' Mr Ibusuki told AFP. 'I have seen many cases in which they were forced to work nearly 200 hours of overtime a month.'
Some 177,000 foreigners - mainly from China, Indonesia and the Philippines - were believed to be in Japan as of late 2007 with government training programmes.
Many of the trainees work on assembly lines, mainly in the textiles, food processing and machinery sectors, the lawyer said.
Japan has one of the world's lowest birth rates, but it has so far rejected allowing large-scale immigration of unskilled workers. -- AFP
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