Wahyudin dreams of becoming a full-fledged caregiver, if not a certified nurse, in Japan. But the Indonesian worker must first pass the required Japanese-language national certification examination, which is far from easy.
Until then the 29-year-old Wahyudin, a registered nurse in his home country, will remain a caregiver trainee in an elderly-care facility in Yamada city in western Tokushima prefecture, where he has worked since arriving in Japan two years ago.
“It’s a long shot but there is no other way I can push my career forward and build a stable future [unless I pass the test],” Wahyudin, who uses one name, said of the examination.
Passing it would give him the professional caregiver status thatwould allow him to be hired by any hospital or nursing home in Japan. He can also expect higher compensation.
The language examination is designed to ensure integration into Japanese society and meet professional standards, but few foreigners manage to pass it. Now, those who work with the elderly in one of the world’s fastest aging societies say it is time to take a second look at this requirement, given Japan’s rapidly growing need for caregivers, many of whom come from overseas.
“Expecting foreign caregivers and nurses to pass the difficult examination in Japanese is unfair and smacks of discrimination,” said Tsutomu Fukuma, spokesman for the Japanese Council of Senior Citizens Welfare Service, a leading nursing care provider.
“The system has disappointed them and many are giving up on staying in Japan, which is not what we want,” he said.
As it is, the Health and Welfare Ministry says the number of Japanese caregivers, most of them middle-aged, is declining. There were 350,000 workers in the healthcare system in 2009, down from 400,000 three years ago. Younger Japanese are not entering the sector.
Japan has 13 million people aged over 75, or 10% of its population of 127 million. In 2025, that age group is projected to grow to 22 million people – and the government predicts that the country will need more than two million caregivers by then.
This is why Japan has been turning to foreign caregivers, but they are not finding it easy to stay for too long in the country. At present, foreign nurses and caregivers are allowed to work in Japan for a maximum of three and four years, respectively. During this period, they must study Japanese and pass the certifying examination that they can take only once.
Because Japan is officially a closed labor market to foreigners, it has different agreements with countries that allow a certain number of “trainees” each year to come work for specified periods of time.
Wahyudin, for instance, came under an economic partnership agreement (EPA) signed between Japan and Indonesia in 2008. A similar pact was signed with the Philippines, another major provider of caregivers here, in 2006.
There are 570 Indonesians and 310 Filipinos working in nursing or elder homes in Japan. A total of 254 have taken the nursing examination, but only three – two Indonesians and one Filipino – have passed and acquired full-time employment status.
Among others, caregivers and nurses seeking professional certification in Japan are lobbying the government to allow foreign examinees to use dictionaries during the test to help them with unfamiliar technical terms and Kanji or Chinese characters, one of three scripts used in the Japanese language, or Nihongo.
But beyond the examination itself, caregivers rue the limited time they have to study the language.
“It’s really hard for us to reach the level of language needed to successfully sit for the exam,” said Wahyudin, who has just one hour or so a day to review his Nihongo owing to his busy work schedule. He is getting formal language training, but he said this is far from adequate even with the six-month government-subsidized language course.
The situation of the elderly in Japan also reflects changing norms that have seen more young adults living away from their aging parents. In fact, the number of Japanese who are over 65 years old, living alone and with no one to look after them, numbered more than 4.6 million as of June 2009.
To many, this highlights even more the need for more caregivers, but not everyone agrees.
Professor Keiko Higuchi, a member of the government panel of welfare advisors, said Japan’s caregiving system should instead encourage the elderly to lead more independent lives. “I am not against accepting foreign caregivers or nurses. But before we start opening the doors [to them], Japan must ensure that its nursing care for the elderly continues to focus on helping them to help themselves,” she said.
Yukiko Okuma, a well-known author on nursing care for the elderly, sees Japan’s EPAs with Indonesia and the Philippines as a quick fix.
“The EPA with Indonesia is a quick remedy for the labor shortage we face in the welfare sector. As a result, we now have a system that faces the risk of lowering Japan’s nursing standards to accommodate more Asian nationals who are themselves not treated fairly under the scheme,” she said.
Okuma adds that today’s situation is also a product of a society where women, especially wives and daughters-in-law, have traditionally taken care of aging parents, leading to “a poorly recognized and underfinanced welfare system” in Japan.
“Japan’s welfare for the elderly must be viewed as a national priority, where workers are treated well by giving them good salaries, paid vacations and other employment benefits, whether they are Japanese or Asians,” she said.
Nursing
Caregivers sent to Japan under EPA get hand to overcome language hurdle
The Philippine government has begun language classes to help nurses wanting to go and work in Japan overcome the high language barrier, and even pays them to enroll.
The project is aimed at boosting the rate of Philippine applicants who pass Japan’s national nursing examination and increasing the number of nurses seeking a career in Japan under the economic partnership agreement (EPA) between the two countries.
During one recent Japanese class, a teacher held up a panel with kanji for difficult words, such as “roasha” [聾唖者] (the hearing impaired) and “nenza” [捻挫] (sprain), while the students read the words aloud in unison.
In February, 59 Philippine nurses made their first attempt at Japan’s national nursing exams; only one passed. If nurses on the EPA program fail to pass the exam for three straight years, they must return home.
Questions have been raised over the current EPA arrangement, which offers foreign nurses only six months of Japanese language lessons.
The EPA between Japan and the Philippines took effect in December 2008. In May last year, the Philippines began dispatching nurses and caregivers to Japan. Under the EPA deal, Japan accepts up to 1,000 such nurses and caregivers for two years, but only 436 have been sent so far.
In Japan, the high cost of getting foreign nurses up to speed because of the language hurdle has deterred some potential employers from hiring them. The EPA will be reviewed next year, and Tokyo likely will seek to tweak the current system.
Viveca Catalig, a deputy administrator at the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, acknowledged his country’s own effort has its limits, and said he hopes Japan will consider expanding its language training and easing requirements for nurses in order not to disappoint motivated Philippine applicants.
Japan looks for answers as China surges past
Japan’s GDP slump, and news that China’s economy is now bigger, will intensify the search for answers on turning around the economy.
To some, the answer lies offshore. Not in the traditional sense of exporting cars and televisions, but in bringing in new workers from Japan’s rapidly developing neighbours.
The Japanese are good at finding reasons why immigration won’t work, pointing to racial disharmony, problems with integration and culture shock among residents and immigrants. This public view is broadly reflected in government policy.
However, The Australian spoke this week to Hirohiko Nakamura, one of a minority of Japanese politicians who believe in dramatically increasing immigration.
Mr Nakamura, who hails from the conservative leaning Liberal Democratic Party, said Japan’s population was on track to drop from 127 million to just 90 million in the next 45 years, by which time almost 40 per cent would be aged over 65.
“We are already in a state of absolute manpower shortage. It is inevitable that we must take in immigrants to save such a critical situation,” he said.
“We should move towards a 21st-century Japan with a global and multicultural society.”
He believes immigration from Asia would be beneficial throughout the economy, not just in specific sectors. “What’s needed first for Japanese economic growth is securing an unparalleled amount of new labour. The Japanese youth need to learn from the youth of other parts of Asia about diligence and the motivation to live a wealthy life,” he said.
These are strong words in Japan where, according to Mr Nakamura, the many opponents of immigration fall into two camps: believers in Japan’s racial “purity”, and those with more basic concerns about integrating newcomers and perhaps safeguarding their own jobs.
Through the Diet (parliament) Members League to Promote the International Exchange of Human Resources, Mr Nakamura and about 80 other MPs are trying to shift attitudes to immigration.
With a low birth rate and a stalled economy plagued by deflation, immigration is becoming an economic issue as well as a social one.
Since assuming office in June, Prime Minister Naoto Kan has watched as his options for reviving the economy have disappeared.
Japan’s burgeoning public sector debt, and Mr Kan’s pledge for fiscal consolidation, probably rules out another large Keynesian stimulus package. Rates have been at near zero levels since the global financial crisis, but companies remain reluctant to borrow to expand capacity. And now the strong yen is reducing export earnings, applying a further brake on the economy, which grew by a dismal 0.4 per cent in the June quarter, compared to 4.4 per cent in the previous quarter.
Despite the economic gloom, the argument in Japan is not about how fast to grow the population, as in Australia, but whether to grow at all. The former head of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau, Sakanaka Hidenori, summed up the dilemma in a 2007 essay in which he says Japan must choose between big and small options.
The small option, he says, involves accepting a steep population decline to perhaps 80 million. The trade off for a peaceful and less environmentally damaging lifestyle would be accepting higher taxes and lower benefits.
Mr Hidenori is honest enough to concede that emotionally he favours the small option, but he argues Japan won’t be given the choice. An influx of immigration from China and other rapidly expanding Asian neighbours would prove difficult to control if Japan puts up the drawbridge, he says.
Implementing the big option, though, will not be easy. “The country would need to accept over 20 million immigrants during the next 50 years. Before welcoming such an unprecedented influx, Japan would need to build a national consensus that new arrivals would be welcomed as friends and contributors to Japanese society,” he says. He admits there would be social, environmental and energy costs, but concludes the tide of globalisation is irresistible.
To address labour shortages, Japan has introduced a short-term internship program for unskilled labourers and a scheme to attract foreign nurses. However, both have significant flaws. Under the first program, some trainees have been ruthlessly exploited and effectively worked to death, while the insistence on having nurses pass an arcane and complicated Japanese exam has crippled the effectiveness of the second.
Mr Nakamura said the failures of such schemes were often unjustly blamed on the workers, making his task even harder.
The process of integrating Japan’s Korean community — its most established migrant group — has also been difficult. The Korean-Japanese community, who were originally brought to Japan as forced labourers, cannot vote and must register as aliens unless they become naturalised Japanese, a process some resist because it involves relinquishing their Korean citizenship.
Moves to reintegrate Japan’s South American diaspora to provide extra factory workers have been similarly difficult, so perhaps a fresh approach is needed.
While the government resists meaningful change, cold economic reality may force its hand. Japan remains proud of its economic successes. Its relegation by China this week was too sensitive for some Japanese newspapers to report; several reported only a dry summary of the GDP numbers with scant reference to being usurped by the dragon on their doorstep. Many Japanese won’t be prepared to settle for the economic irrelevance of Hidenori’s small option, and using economic arguments to change people’s views might prove easier than expected.
Meager pay keeps ranks of instructors in doldrums
It may not be well-known, but [Japanese language instruction] has also been on the rise, with more people than ever trying to learn [the language]. But the number of Japanese who teach nonnative speakers isn’t growing, partly due to lack of interest among academic circles and the low pay at private language schools that derives in part from restrictions on management.
Some advocates stress the need to get the numbers up, as Japan is aging rapidly and reliance on an immigrant workforce is going to grow, thus it is important that newcomers be conversant in the language.
According to the education ministry, foreigners in the country studying Japanese increased to 170,858 in fiscal 2009 from 135,146 in fiscal 2003.
The number of Japanese-language teachers, excluding volunteers, dropped from 14,047 to 13,437 over the same period.
The trend is particularly noticeable at the nation’s universities. Foreign students studying Japanese at such institutions rose to 53,546 in fiscal 2009 from 34,880 four years earlier. Despite the jump, the number of teachers stayed almost unchanged, 4,250 last year versus 4,240 in fiscal 2003.
Satoshi Miyazaki, a professor at the graduate school of Japanese applied linguistics at Waseda University, said it is unfortunate teacher ranks are not growing. They should be boosted and put in positions of responsibility to enable a long-term commitment, otherwise, for example, universities would have a hard time improving their programs for international students.
The slow growth in Japanese teachers is shared by private language academies. Such commercial entities had 5,947 teachers and 50,479 students in fiscal 2003, compared with 5,959 teachers and 53,047 students in fiscal 2009.
“One reason for the lack of Japanese teachers is because it’s not a well-paid job,” said Nobuo Suzuki, who manages Arc Academy, a Japanese-language school with several branches in the Tokyo and Kansai areas.
Suzuki explained that about 80 percent of his teachers work part time and most are women.
The hourly wage is about ¥1,700 to ¥1,800 for new part-time teachers, who can only teach around three hours a week when they start out. Their hours can go up every three months and the part-time wage can rise to about ¥2,500.
An experienced teacher makes on average ¥7,000 to ¥8,000 a day.
Suzuki said full-time teachers with 10 years of experience earn about ¥4 million a year.
The meager pay means few young people, especially men, want to become Japanese-language teachers, people in the field say.
Yumiko Furukawa, a full-time teacher at Arc Academy who has been in the game for four years, said the high turnover rate — teachers last an average of only two years — is mainly because of wages.
“It is quite difficult to support an entire household by teaching Japanese, but there are many who love teaching Japanese, and I think Japanese-language teaching is supported by their passion,” said Furukawa, 41, whose husband also works so she doesn’t have to rely on just her wages.
[Makoto Murakami, head of the editorial department at the monthly magazine Gekkan Nihongo (Monthly Japanese)] Murakami likened Japanese-language teachers to nurses and caregivers.
“The number of people who will need caregivers will increase sharply, but the number of caregivers doesn’t grow because the job conditions aren’t very good,” and if the situation doesn’t change there won’t be enough Japanese teachers, even though the number of foreigners is likely to keep increasing, Murakami said.
Strict immigration rules may threaten Japan’s future
Her new country needs her, her new employer adores her, and Joyce Anne Paulino, who landed here 14 months ago knowing not a word of the language, can now say in Japanese that she’d like very much to stay. But Paulino, 31, a nurse from the Philippines, worries about the odds. To stay in Japan long-term, she must pass a test that almost no foreigner passes.
For Japan, maintaining economic relevance in the next decades hinges on its ability — and its willingness — to grow by seeking outside help. Japan has long had deep misgivings about immigration and has tightly controlled the ability of foreigners to live and work here.
But with the country’s population expected to fall from 127 million to below 100 million by 2055, Prime Minister Naoto Kan last month took a step toward loosening Japan’s grip on immigration, outlining a goal to double the number of highly skilled foreign workers within a decade.
In Japan, just 1.7 percent of the population (or roughly 2.2 million people) is foreign or foreign-born. Foreigners represent small slices of almost every sector of the economy, but they also represent the one slice of the population with a chance to grow. Japan is on pace to have three workers for every two retirees by 2060.
But the economic partnership program that brought Paulino and hundreds of other nurses and caretakers to Japan has a flaw. Indonesian and Filipino workers who come to care for a vast and growing elderly population cannot stay for good without passing a certification test. And that test’s reliance on high-level Japanese — whose characters these nurses cram to memorize — has turned the test into a de facto language exam.
Ninety percent of Japanese nurses pass the test. This year, three of 254 immigrants passed it. The year before, none of 82 passed.
For immigrant advocates, a pass-or-go-home test with a success rate of less than 1 percent creates a wide target for criticism — especially at a time when Japan’s demographics are increasing the need for skilled foreign labor.
For many officials in the government and the medical industry, however, difficulties with the program point to a larger dilemma confronting a country whose complex language and resistance to foreigners make it particularly tough to penetrate.
Kan’s goal to double the number of skilled foreign workers seems reasonable enough, given that Japan currently has 278,000 college-educated foreign workers — the United States has more than 8 million, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — but it meets some resistance.
An Asahi Shimbun newspaper poll in June asked Japanese about accepting immigrants to “maintain economic vitality.” Twenty-six percent favored the idea. Sixty-five percent opposed it. And the likelihood of substantive changes in immigration policy took a major hit, experts said, when Kan’s ruling Democratic Party of Japan saw setbacks in parliamentary elections this month.
Political analysts now paint a grim picture of a country at legislative impasse. Foreigners such as Paulino find it difficult to get here, difficult to thrive and difficult to stay, and at least for now, Kan’s government will have a difficult time changing any of that.
‘A lack of urgency’
“There’s a lack of urgency or lack of sense of crisis for the declining population in Japan,” said Satoru Tominaga, director of Garuda, an advocacy group for Indonesian nurse and caretaker candidates. “We need radical policy change to build up the number” of such workers. “However, Japan lacks a strong government; if anything, it’s in chaos.”
When Japan struck economic partnership agreements with Indonesia and the Philippines, attracting nurses and caretakers wasn’t the primary objective. Japan sought duty-free access for its automakers to the Southeast Asian market. Accepting skilled labor was just part of the deal.
But by 2025, Japan will need to almost double its number of nurses and care workers, currently at 1.2 million. And because of the test, substandard language skills, not substandard caretaking skills, are keeping the obvious solution from meeting the gaping need.
The 998 Filipino and Indonesian nurses and caretakers who’ve come to Japan since 2008 all have, at minimum, college educations or several years of professional experience. Nurses can stay for three years, with three chances to pass the test. Other caregivers can stay for four years, with one chance to pass. Those who arrive in Japan take a six-month language cram class and then begin work as trainees.
They are allotted a brief period every workday — 45 minutes, in Paulino’s case — for language study. Many also study for hours at night.
“The language skills, that is a huge hurdle for them,” said Kiichi Inagaki, an official at the Japan International Corporation for Welfare Services, which oversees the program. “However, if you go around the hospital, you understand how language is important. Nurses are dealing with medical technicalities. They are talking to doctors about what is important. In order to secure a safe medical system, they need a very high standard of Japanese.”
Advocates for foreign nurses and caregivers do not play down the importance of speaking and understanding Japanese. But they emphasize that the Japanese characters for medical terminology are among the hardest to learn; perhaps some jargon-heavy portion of the certification test, they say, could be given in English or workers’ native language.
A new culture
When Paulino boarded a flight from Manila to Tokyo in May 2009, she had a sense of trepidation and adventure — not that she could express it in Japanese. She saw her mission as a way to make better money and “explore herself,” she said. Her first chance for exploration came onboard, when a meal of rice, which she doesn’t like, came with chopsticks, which she didn’t know how to use.
“All the way to Japan, we were joking about that,” said Fritzie Perez, a fellow Filipino nurse who sat in the same row. “We were saying, ‘Joyce, how are you going to eat?’ ”
Now eight months into her stint at the Tamagawa Subaru nursing home, Paulino feels comfortable speaking and joking with the elderly people she cares for.
“She did have problems initially, especially in the Japanese language, but there’s been so much improvement,” said Keisuke Isozaki, head of caretaking at the home. “She’s not capable of writing things down for the record, but otherwise she’s as capable as any Japanese staffer.”
Paulino said she is nervous about her test, scheduled for January 2013. This month, 33 nurses and caretakers returned to their home countries, discouraged with their chances.
Her friend, Perez, described the language study and the caretaking as “serving two masters at the same time.”
“When I get home, that’s when I study,” Paulino said. “But every time I read my book, I start to fall asleep. It’s bothering me. Because [the test] is only one chance. And I don’t know if I can get it.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/27/AR2010072706053.html
The only Filipino nurse to pass Japan’s nursing exam
Ever Lalin, like others in the first batch of 98 nurses and caregivers who went to Japan May last year for a training stint preparatory to taking the Japanese nursing licensure exam, had no prior lessons in the Niponggo language.
“Halimaw ah (A monster’s feat),” cheered nurse bloggers when it was announced last March that Ever, 34, was the only Filipino to pass the difficult licensure exam and the only foreign applicant to get it on the first try. Two Indonesians who had arrived a year earlier also passed. The exam included a proficiency test in “kanji,” Chinese characters that are a mindset away from those schooled in the Roman alphabet.
Director Nimpha De Guzman of the Welfare and Employment Office of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) noted that tests had showed Ever had a high aptitude for languages.
The nurse from Abra, noted De Guzman, had spent four years working in a hospital in Saudi Arabia and came home speaking fluent Arabic.
Interviewed via email for a presentation prepared by POEA-TV for the recent Migrant Workers Day celebration, Ever was quoted as saying it must have been her high motivation and dogged determination—for her professional satisfaction as well as the financial advancement of her family.
“I studied so hard…every minute counted,” she had told De Guzman. She took advanced Japanese review classes.
There was another thing going for Ever that other equally motivated Filipino nurses may not have had. The hospital she was assigned to—Ashikaga Red Cross Hospital—had a special intervention program for foreign trainees like Ever. A Japanese staff member was assigned to be her mentor, De Guzman shared.
Right after she got her Japanese nursing license, the Ashikaga hospital handed Ever an upgraded appointment to the emergency room, reportedly a section of her choice.
While learning Japanese may be difficult for a nation so long concerned with learning English, said officials, it’s not impossible. Inspired by Ever’s example, a new batch of trainees under the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement has been dispatched.
33 foreign care workers go home; test too difficult
Thirty-three Filipinos and Indonesians who came to Japan to work as nurses and nursing care workers have returned home after becoming discouraged by their slim prospects of passing the national exams for their professions, it has been learned.
Eleven went home after learning they had failed the latest annual nursing exam. Only 1.2 percent of foreign applicants have passed the exam.
More would-be nurses and care workers could decide to return home after becoming discouraged by the language barrier in the exams, according to observers.
The government plans to review the exams’ format, including the language and terminology used.
Since fiscal 2008, 998 nurses and care workers have arrived in Japan under bilateral economic partnership agreements with the Philippines and Indonesia.
No foreign applicant passed last year’s exams, as they apparently had difficulty understanding kanji and technical terms written in Japanese. This year, only three passed the nursing exam.
The 33 trainees who returned home were among the 880 who arrived in fiscal 2008 and 2009. They comprised 15 Indonesians, including 12 nurses, and 18 Filipinos, including 11 nurses.
According to the Japanese International Corporation of Welfare Service, which oversees the program, 118 nurses and care-givers arrived this fiscal year.
Under the bilateral agreements, the nurses are given help learning Japanese and preparing for the exams while working at hospitals and care facilities in the nation.
Applicants can take the exam when they are deemed to have professional skills and knowledge equal to those of graduates of Japanese nursing schools or university nursing science departments.
These foreigners can work in Japan as certified nurses or care workers only if they pass the exams within three or four years of arriving here, respectively. They can only work in limited trainee nurse roles until they pass the exam: If they fail to pass the exam before the three- or four-year term expires, they must return home.
An expert panel of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry this month discussed measures to alleviate the problem, such as using simpler alternatives to difficult technical terms in the nursing exams.
The panel will draw up proposals as soon as next month.
Nursing candidates get online help
A website that assists foreign students studying Japanese has been updated to help nurse and caregiver candidates from Indonesia and the Philippines learn to read kanji Chinese characters and what Japanese medical and care terms mean.
A group led by Yoshiko Kawamura, a professor of Japanese language teaching at Tokyo International University, has added Indonesian and Tagalog versions and about 2,000 nursing care terms to its Reading Tutor Web Dictionary (http://chuta.jp).
When a Japanese sentence including the kanji for kaigo is input and the dictionary button clicked, the Indonesian version produces merawat for the word, while the Tagalog version shows pag-aalaga. The English version gives “nursing care.”
Hundreds of Indonesians and Filipinos are working as trainees under Japan’s economic partnership agreements with their countries. Nurses must pass the Japanese state exam in three years and caregivers in four years to continue working in this country, but the Japanese language stands in their way.
The program started with Indonesia in 2008 and the Philippines in 2009. Only three nurses have passed the state exam so far.
Language sets high hurdle for caregiver candidates
FOREIGN NURSES
Since the first batch of Indonesian nurses and caregivers arrived in 2008 under a new bilateral economic partnership agreement, 570 have come to Japan, as have 310 Filipinos under another EPA that took effect two years ago.
But just two Indonesians and one Filipino — out of 254 applicants — passed Japan’s nursing qualification exam in February, becoming the first successful candidates to receive the right to work in this country indefinitely.While 89.5 percent of all exam-takers passed this year, the corresponding number for Indonesians and Filipinos was only 1.2 percent.
In response to the results as well as burdens on their employers, the number of accepting hospitals and welfare facilities in fiscal 2010 dropped by one-third for Indonesians and by half for Filipinos.
As the second batch of Filipino candidates arrived in Japan on Sunday and Indonesia is now selecting the third batch, the government has started to take measures to increase the examination pass rate.
Following are basic questions and answers about foreign nurse and caregiver applicants entering Japan under the EPAs:
Why did Japan start accepting nurse and caregiver candidates from Indonesia and the Philippines?
The acceptance is part of bilateral EPAs, one with Indonesia that took effect on July 1, 2008, and another with the Philippines that started on Dec. 11 the same year.
Under the accords, Japan can benefit from the reduction or removal of tariffs on Japanese goods. In return, Japan agreed to accept nurses and caregivers from the two countries as candidates for certification to work here.
Although the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has denied that accepting foreign caregivers is part of efforts to resolve the manpower shortage in health care, about 60 percent of hospitals and about 50 percent of welfare facilities that have accepted Indonesian candidates said they offered them jobs hoping to improve staff levels, according to a survey conducted by the health ministry.
What is required to become a qualified nurse or caregiver in Japan under the EPAs?
Both Indonesians and Filipinos must be qualified nurses in their home countries. Plus, Indonesian nurses must have more than two years of experience. Filipino nurses should have three years of experience.
For caregivers, Indonesians must be graduates of nursing universities or schools that require at least three years of study. Filipinos must be graduates of four-year universities or nursing colleges.
All are required to take six months of Japanese-language training before working for care facilities.
Nurses must pass the annual exam within three years, while caregivers get four years. To be qualified to take the exam, caregiver applicants must have three years of on-the-job training in Japan, which means they have only one shot to pass the exam before they are asked to return to their countries.
What other options for qualifying are available?
Filipino candidates can undergo a caregiver-trainee program that doesn’t require them to pass the national exam.
To qualify for the program, one must be a graduate of a four-year-university in the Philippines.
After completing the six-month Japanese-language course, they are required to graduate from Japanese caregiver schools, a process that takes two to four years.
Under this program, candidates automatically become qualified caregivers upon graduation.
How much are the nurses and caregivers paid?
Both EPAs guarantee the Indonesians and Filipinos will be paid salaries equivalent to their Japanese counterparts.
On average, this would amount to between ¥150,000 and ¥160,000 a month, according to Hiroya Yaguchi, a manager of Japan International Corp. of Welfare Services, an affiliate of and the only placement organization appointed by the health ministry.
Because pay levels differ among hospitals and welfare facilities, there is no set pay standard, Yaguchi said.
Some people are receiving around ¥200,000 per month, while the lowest salary among the accepting facilities is around ¥120,000, according to JICWELS.
However, because living costs vary by region, salaries can’t be compared simply by their amount, Yaguchi noted.
Do the accepting institutions provide accommodations?
Some hospital and care facilities provide free dormitories for employees. There are also institutions that rent out living quarters, and in some cases employees receive housing subsidies, according to JICWELS.
Do candidates get any support to prepare for the national exam?
The accepting institutions are responsible for teaching the candidates Japanese and helping them to prepare for the national exam, but the extent of such support varies between facilities.
According to a health ministry survey in February, about 76 percent of employers said Japanese nurses are helping candidates to prepare for the national exam, and about 30 percent said they are hiring teachers from outside.
Why has the number of hospitals and welfare institutions accepting Indonesian and Filipino candidates sharply dropped for fiscal 2010?
Experts attribute the decline to the employers’ financial and manpower burdens.
Employers pay an initial cost of about ¥600,000 per candidate.
The cost includes part of the six-month Japanese training fees and living expenses, as well as commission and placement fees to pay for JICWELS and its counterparts in Indonesia and the Philippines.
In addition, employers must pay ¥21,000 per person per year to JICWELS as a management fee.
Also, in many cases Japanese staff are helping candidates to study for the national exam. This has become a burden for facilities already suffering manpower shortages.
What are the candidates’ main linguistic problems?
Experts say kanji and technical terms used in the national exam pose a high hurdle for Indonesians and Filipinos. The health ministry is considering using simpler terms in the nursing exam.
Is the government doing anything to improve the situation?
Starting in fiscal 2010, the government will pay a yearly ¥295,000 subsidy for each hospital that accepts one or more nurse candidates and ¥117,000 per candidate a year to cover training expenses, according to the labor ministry.
Facilities that accept caregivers will receive a ¥235,000 government subsidy per person each year.
Also, JICWELS is providing so-called e-learning at all the hospitals that have accepted nurse candidates. The Internet learning system provides exercise books and past national tests in Japanese, English and Indonesian.
In addition, JICWELS is distributing Japanese-language textbooks to hospitals with nurse candidates this fiscal year.
However, these support measures are currently available only to nursing candidates.
Fresh batch of Filipino nurses, caregivers to leave for Japan
A fresh batch of over 100 candidate nurses and caregivers will leave the Philippines for Japan this weekend to begin free language and skills training, officials said Saturday.
A total of 46 nurses and 70 caregivers, the third group of Filipino health workers to be sent to Japan, will depart Sunday to undergo a six-month Japanese language and cultural course before beginning work in Japanese health care institutions, said Jennifer Manalili, head of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.
Two other caregivers already fluent in Japanese will leave in June.
Manalili said the screening for this year’s batch of health workers under the bilateral program, now still in its second year, was “more rigorous to ensure an excellent and well prepared corps of candidates.”
Japanese Ambassador Makoto Katsura led a sendoff ceremony for the candidates on Friday, calling the opening up Japan to more Filipino nurses and care workers under the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement that came into effect in December 2008 a “testimony to the deepening relations” between the two countries.
He said the scheme will be instrumental in changing not just the lives of Filipino health workers “but the cooperative landscape of our two nations as well.”
The envoy told the candidates they will face various challenges as they work in an entirely different environment and interact with people with a different culture and language, but should “stay focused on the objectives you have set for yourself.”
“But do not let the unfamiliar faze you. Let it be your motivation to develop your skills and further improve yourselves in your respective fields,” he said.
Katsura extended his congratulations to Ever Lalin of the first batch of Filipino health workers for having cleared the language barrier and passed the Japanese Nursing Licensure Examination a mere 10 months after she arrived in Japan last year.
“I hope (Lalin’s) achievement will inspire all of you,” he said, urging them “to dedicate yourselves to your studies and remaining steadfast to your goals.”
The latest deployment of Filipino health workers comes amid a fresh Philippine proposal to conduct the six-month language and skills- training here in the Philippines so that they could remain close to their families.
The entry of Filipino nurses and caregivers to Japan is one of the main highlights of the bilateral economic partnership agreement concluded in 2006. Japan has also been accepting health workers from Indonesia.
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