Japan's Technical Intern Training Program (TITP) to be Abolished

[The government panel responsible for reviewing the Technical Intern Training Program (TITP) has just announced it plans to propose abolishing it. This is much welcomed by those who have been concerned about the programme’s failures and unnecessary pain and suffering it brought to the interns. The programme has been used as a side-door to allow migrant workers into Japan to alleviate the acute labour shortage caused by the rapidly aging and declining Japanese population. Exploitation of the trainees is rampant. This is a short opinion piece to show readers who still think that the TITP is an altruistic programme which provides earnings for the trainees and enables them to take technical know-how to their countries of origin that it in fact puts the trainees in vulnerable positions and exploits them, not unlike, for example, what Central and Eastern European (CEE) workers in wealthier European countries endure. I will outline the situations of CEE workers as well as TITP trainees to show that similar patterns of vulnerability and exploitation exist