Irrelevant Pension Administration

Inappropriate expenditure of tax money may lead to a crisis of democracy. What if it happened in Japan? The people still keep on paying for the government. Huge amount of mistakes in administrating pension system was found in Japan Pension System, a private organization that had been established after a governmental agency was dismantled with management scandal. Consecutive failures cast one fundamental question: Is pension system workable in a society?

Most Japanese workers pay pension money to the organization withheld from monthly salary. The money will be returned to them when they get old and retired from jobs. Since pension system of Japan is highly comprehensive, it is quasi-taxation in terms of forced payment posed on the people.

After the establishment in five years ago, the number of reported mistakes in office work of JPS exceeded ten thousands. The incidents included wrong confirmation about recipient data or mistake in inputting personal records. Looking into the problems revealed, the office work in JPS is not fully automated and the most problems occurred by human error. According to a report of Asahi Shimbun, total amount affected to pension system these five years amounted to ¥8.9 billion.

JPS was established after Social Insurance Agency of Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare lost five hundred billions of records of pension recipients. It became a major scandal that made a cause of collapse of Liberal Democratic Party administration. JPS started as non-governmental organization that should be excluding irresponsible job standard of bureaucracy.

Nevertheless, JPS has not shown any completed version of administrating what is called pension system. The organization found 1.25 millions of leakage in personal data it possessed in May. JPS is losing credibility as an organization dealing with huge amount of personal data. This is meanwhile a collapse of universal pension system, meaning irrelevancy of the government to guarantee retired life of workers.

This is one of the problems of Japanese bureaucracy. There exists among bureaucrats a concept of “Master Sun Flag,” which means their boss is national authority and they would never lose their job as long as the country exists. Workers in JPS still embrace that notion, succeeded from bureaucratic SIA.

When SIA scandal was revealed, the people realized that pension system might not be eternal. Namely, young people were frustrated with its incredibility, embracing a concern that they would not receive their payment in the future. It is a mystery why Japanese people keep on paying for uncertain future.