TOKYO, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- A Justice Ministry inquiry showed Thursday that 174 foreigners who were engaged in work as part of Japan's technical internship program died between 2010 and 2017 as a result of accidents, illness and other fatal reasons.
Amid the country's increasingly tight labor crunch, the figures may spark concern as Japan prepares to widen its immigration doors and accept more workers from overseas from April.
The move, bulldozed through parliament by the majority of Prime Minster Shinzo Abe's ruling coalition, has been met with resistance from opposition parties and workers' rights advocacy groups, who have urged the government to first deal with the current problem of blue collar workers being exploited under the current training scheme.
As to the Justice Ministry's latest inquiry, the 174 workers who died while they were in Japan for the technical internship program comprised both men and women who were aged from 18 to 44.
Chinese nationals accounted for the largest number of deaths at 98, with the losses of life of Vietnamese standing at 46. There were 12 Indonesian deaths, six Filipinos, four Thais, three from Myanmar and Mongolian and two from Lao.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry revealed in a separate report Thursday, that 125 foreign workers have died due to work-related accidents during the 10 years through 2017, with the number including technical interns.
A lawmaker Akira Nagatsuma representing the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ) was quoted as saying at a meeting of opposition party members who are critical of the government's overly-rapid push to acquire more blue collar workers, "We would like to completely expose the dark side of the technical intern program."
According to the data, some of the deaths were caused by illness, some by drowning and others by traffic accidents.
About 258,000 technical interns were working in Japan in the food, construction and farming industries, as of the end of October last year.
