TOKYO, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) — The Japanese authorities is planning to introduce measures to deal with extreme labor shortages within the nation’s transport and logistics industries, native media reported.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Thursday instructed the press that he’ll convene a ministerial assembly subsequent week to debate a package deal of measures to deal with the attainable scarcity of truck drivers, in keeping with native media.
The plan was introduced after Kishida’s go to to a logistics agency in Tokyo, nationwide news company Kyodo reported, because the introduction of extra time rules on truck drivers is anticipated to trigger a critical scarcity of such employees.
The so-called “2024 problem” will restrict extra time work for truck drivers to 960 hours a yr beginning in April subsequent yr as a part of the working-style reforms.
Apart from incentives for the automation of cargo dealing with work and discount of re-deliveries, the measures have been additionally anticipated to advertise the usage of self-driving expertise, in keeping with the prime minister, who additionally reiterated intentions to higher therapy for truck drivers.
In the meantime, Japan is operating wanting bus and taxi drivers because it struggles to search out new staff as older drivers retire. The state of affairs is predicted to worsen over the following a number of years.
An absence of drivers is forcing bus operators nationwide to chop their variety of common routes, in keeping with Japanese transport officers, who additionally predicted that the nation can be wanting over 30,000 bus drivers by the fiscal yr of 2030.
In Japan’s taxi-driving sector, which is lengthy dominated by an growing old workforce, the variety of drivers on the finish of March logged a pointy drop of 20.4 p.c from 4 years in the past, a separate survey carried out by the Japan Federation of Hire-Taxi Associations confirmed.
Many drivers, discouraged by a decline in earnings, give up throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas some have been afraid of getting contaminated of their automobiles, in keeping with the survey.
The authorities is seeking to increase the prevailing visa framework by including a “transport driver” class for specified expert employees, in order to draw overseas nationals to work within the short-staffed industries by the tip of this fiscal yr by March 2024.