'Amakudari' arrangement to be banned by end of year+

TOKYO, Feb. 3 Kyodo -
Prime Minister Taro Aso expressed willingness Tuesday to forbid ministries and
agencies to play a mediatory role in finding postretirement jobs for their
officials by the end of this year.
Aso also said at the House of Representatives Budget Committee that he will ban
the so-called ''watari'' system in which retired bureaucrats repeatedly land
postretirement jobs at entities connected to the ministries they worked at by
the end of this year.
The government initially set a three-year transition period through 2011 before
completely banning the ''watari'' system and ministries' arrangements of the
so-called ''amakudari'' practice, in which senior bureaucrats land
postretirement jobs at entities related to the sectors they formerly
supervised.
Aso moved the schedule up, saying, ''I would like to create a government
ordinance to ban them by the end of this year,'' although he had initially been
reluctant to revise an ordinance permitting the watari system to continue
during the transition period.
On the watari system, Aso has said he has no intention of authorizing such
arrangements anymore during his term of office, but his latest remarks that the
government will make a new ordinance to ban them by the end of this year went a
step further.
==Kyodo
2009-02-03 22:14:40