Japanese charity at work: air conditioners for the homeless

[Taro Toporific]

Homeless get air conditioner windfall from shifty electronics firm(Mainichi / Wire reports, Sept. 1, 2004)
NAGOYA ---One of the Tokai region's biggest electronics retailers has been raided after it gave hundreds of old air conditioners to a company because it was cheaper than going through the legally required recycling process, police said.
Homeless people who received them later stripped the roughly 220 discarded coolers for saleable parts, then left the skeletal remains in parks across Aichi Prefecture....

[Captain Japan]

And speaking of charity, the giving doesn't stop there...

3,027 golden parachutes popped in past 5 yrs
Archiveless Daily Gomiuri

A total of 3,027 former bureaucrats from 18 governmental entities landed postretirement jobs through procurance by their ministries or agencies in a practice known as amakudari, or descent from heaven, according to a document endorsed by the Cabinet on Tuesday.

The document was a response to a question by Akira Nagatsuma, a House of Representatives member from Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan).

The National Personnel Authority makes public every year how many former bureaucrats have been employed through amakudari by commercial enterprises with which they have had close working relationship during the previous five years. According to these figures, during the past five years, 2,597 former bureaucrats were employed under the system.

The document also listed the number of former bureaucrats who took up employment with nonprofit organizations, but did not say how many had found private sector employment without the aid of their former ministries or agencies.

According to the document, the Construction and Transport Ministry led the pack, finding postretirement jobs for 911 former bureaucrats. It was followed by the Justice Ministry with 629, and the Public Management Ministry with 313.

The document also included how many former bureaucrats from each section of a ministry or agency were hired through amakudari.

Most of those from the Construction and Transport Ministry were former employees of the ministry's regional branches in charge of transportation or civil engineering.

In particular, many former employees of regional civil engineering sections found new employment with construction companies, sources said.

"Each section of the ministry makes decisions in response to private companies in their jurisdiction. The reason the number of our former employees who have been employed (through amakudari) is larger than the other ministries is that they were in demand because of their skills and knowledge," a ministry official said.

As for former bureaucrats of the Justice Ministry, 90 percent of its former employees who have been employed through amakudari was from the ministry's regional legal affairs bureaus or district public prosecutors' offices. Many of them were employed by judicial foundations in their jurisdiction.

A ministry official explained that its former employees were in high demand because of the computerization of the registration system.

The document said amakudari was not a problem provided it was conducted properly, citing that the ministries and agencies recommend employees in response to overtures by private companies or corporations and there had been no documented case in which ministries or agencies had asked companies to accept former employees.