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Japan to allow employment of skilled foreign agricultural workers

Xinhua, December 12, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Japanese government will allow employment of skilled foreign workers in the agricultural sector in special zones, hoping to ease the labor shortage with the aging of the country's population, local media reported Monday.

"We have decided to add the employment of foreign workers in the agricultural sector...to the menu for strategic special zones," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was quoted as saying at a meeting of an advisory council on national strategic special zones.

The strategic special zones are in northeastern Akita prefecture, eastern Ibaraki prefecture, central Aichi prefecture and southwestern Nagasaki prefecture.

Foreign applicants are required to have a certain level of skills and can communicate in Japanese to a certain degree.

In the special zones, skilled foreign workers will be paid at least at the same level as Japanese workers doing the same job.

Of the 2.1 million people in Japan who were mainly engaged in farming in 2015, those aged 65 or older accounted for around 63.5 percent, according to official data. Endit