Make efforts to untangle housewives' pensions
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry's Social Security Council decided Tuesday on measures to deal with the inadvertent failure by full-time housewives to switch to the national pension program.
The government plans to include the measures in a bill to revise the National Pension Law and submit it to the current Diet session.
The ruling and opposition parties should work together to provide an early solution to the issue and prevent public distrust in the pension system from deepening.
Nonworking spouses of company employees and public servants are classified as Category III insured, and are not required to pay pension premiums. They are automatically covered by payments made by all subscribers to welfare and mutual pension plans.
However, if a housewife's annual income is 1.3 million yen or more, or her husband becomes self-employed, the woman must join the national pension plan and pay premiums.
An eye-popping 420,000 housewives of working age have failed to switch to the national pension plan and have not paid premiums for an extensive period.
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Lack of publicity
One factor behind this is the failure of the former Social Insurance Agency to publicize the need to switch to the national pension plan. As a result, there is a strong possibility these housewives will receive a pittance or nothing at all.
The agency considered the period in which no pension premiums were paid as covered by the Category III pension plan. About 53,000 elderly people received excessive pension payments as a result.
As a so-called relief measure for the 420,000 housewives, the welfare ministry in December decided the unpaid premium period should be covered by the Category III plan.
However, the measure came under a barrage of criticism because it was considered unfair for them to receive the same pension as those who had paid premiums after switching to the national pension plan. Naturally, the measure was withdrawn.
The ministry then came up with a new plan in which the periods the 420,000 housewives did not pay premiums would qualify for pensions, but payments would be reduced. If the women wanted to receive full pensions, they would be permitted to pay premiums covering the previous 10 years retroactively.
Elderly pensioners who had been paid an amount exceeding what was due would be asked to return the difference paid over the previous five years. However, those whose income was below a certain level would be exempted from this requirement.
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Balance relief, fairness
We assume the ministry took extra care in working out these measures to ensure a balance between relief and fairness.
However, asking people to return a portion of their pensions seems rather harsh. The ministry says it will exempt nearly 90 percent of elderly pension recipients affected from having to make reimbursements. The ministry must give due consideration to the livelihood of senior citizens when it carries out the measures.
The welfare ministry plans to expedite a review of the current pension system as an integral part of social security and tax system reforms. It should also study measures to improve the complex pension system for full-time housewives.
Fukushima nuclear crisis must be resolved as scheduled
Since the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, the nuclear crisis has been an albatross around the neck of reconstruction efforts. Many people who lived near the nuclear plant have had to evacuate and lose their livelihoods. They desperately want the nuclear accident cleaned up as soon as possible.
"The government will take responsibility for and properly deal with the damage caused by the state's policy [of promoting nuclear power] to the very end," Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Tuesday. We expect him to do his best to faithfully implement the government plan.
Meanwhile, TEPCO updated its road map for settling the nuclear crisis for the first time since the release of its initial road map about a month ago.
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TEPCO plan to settle N-reactor
The utility has not changed its initial target of stabilizing the cooling condition of the plant's crippled reactors by late June and stopping most radiation leaks from the plant by the end of this year. However, it revised its method to bring the reactors to a stable cooling condition because the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors were found to be seriously damaged.
Since massive amounts of water injected into the No. 1 reactor were found to have leaked from its container, TEPCO had to change the initial plan of filling all the reactors with water. Instead, the utility will set up a coolant circulation system that uses water leaking from the reactors and flowing into the reactor buildings.
TEPCO also will build barriers under the ground around these buildings to prevent leaked water contaminated with radioactive substances from polluting groundwater.
However, the nuclear plant's grounds and facilities have many places where radiation levels are so high that people cannot safely approach.
The government should encourage the development and practical application of robots and other sophisticated remote-control technologies that could be used in such places. If technologies developed by universities and manufacturers are used in tandem at the accident site, work to stabilize the reactors will be accelerated. In addition, it will improve the nation's technological capability in this field.
The government also should set up a contact point where a wide spectrum of people can submit ideas so expertise from Japan and abroad could be harnessed to bring the crisis under control.
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Govt support plan
Meanwhile, the government must fully support victims of the nuclear crisis based on its time schedule.
According to this schedule, 15,000 makeshift houses for victims of the nuclear crisis will be built by the first half of August. The victims want to move into these houses by the Bon period in mid-August. The government should work together with concerned municipalities to construct them as soon as possible.
People and businesses affected by the nuclear crisis have received no formal compensation yet, except for provisional compensation payments made by TEPCO. Many victims are voicing frustration about the anxiety that is overshadowing their lives. To ensure they receive compensation smoothly, payment procedures must be quickly clarified.
The government plan includes steps to measure the amount of radiation residents around the plant have received and to remove surface soil from school yards contaminated with radioactive material.
Meanwhile, new contamination is still being found. There recently were reports that radioactive substances were detected on fresh tea leaves harvested in Kanagawa Prefecture.
This issue has a direct bearing on people's health concerns. The government should deal carefully with it and give sufficient explanations to the public.
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