Doctor Stop wrote:If Japanese fishermen don't have it in them, Japan is going to have to rely even more on foreign seamen to get the job done. The locals may object, but they are going have to get used to even more foreign seamen on Japanese soil, in Japanese hair, on Japanese faces, in Japanese eyes...

Fisheries organizations are set to improve their treatment of foreign seamen, including an increase in the minimum wage, in January to prevent them from leaving following the disappearance of foreign fishery laborers who take advantage of the "Maru-ship" system. The Maru-ship system is designed to simplify landing procedures for foreign crew members who work on tuna boats fishing coastal waters. However, since brokering organizations in foreign countries are lax in screening the working qualifications for foreign seamen, the improvement of conditions in Japan alone will not be enough to resolve the problem...The Maru-ship system was introduced in 2003 to ensure the survival of the tuna fishing industry. One hundred and eighty tuna fishing boats, or about 40 percent of all tuna vessels, with about 800 seamen, were registered with fisheries organizations. Of the foreign seamen on these vessels, 90 percent are Indonesian. Of the 118 foreign fisheries workers who have fled over the past five years, 117 were Indonesian...Heeding guidance from the government, the fisheries industry decided to double the minimum wage and increase pay to more than 70,000 yen a month for people who have more than one year of experience. It also will deploy guards at night to prevent brokers who help seamen jump ship from contacting them, and immediately notify the prefectural police and the Japan Coast Guard of any missing seamen. The Construction and Transport Ministry also has demanded that ship owners stop hiring seamen from the foreign brokering organizations whose dispatched workers have gone missing.

But it remains to be seen whether such measures will make a difference. The minimum wage for foreign crew members has been set at more than 326 dollars (about 37,000 yen) a month, but a 28-year-old Indonesian seaman said he has been paid 28,000 yen a month at the most. "Sometimes, I'm only paid 15,000 yen," he said. Since ship owners do not directly hire foreign seamen as they are dispatched by brokering organizations in their home countries, there may be a gap between promised salaries and actual pay. However, even if ship owners pay the newly raised minimum wage, it is still a low salary. An Indonesian seaman, 26, who went missing in 2004, earned about 150,000 yen a month working at a metal processing company in Chiba Prefecture until he was arrested two years later for staying illegally...more...