[/floatr]Yomiuri: Suzuki to cover tuition for foreign kids
Suzuki Motor Corp. is planning to pay the tuition fees at a vocational school for the children of laid-off South Americans living in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, irrespective of whether they are the offspring of its employees. An increasing number of children are dropping out of the Mundo de Alegria school because their parents have lost their jobs in the economic downturn. Suzuki has its headquarters in the city, which is home to a large number of foreign workers. The company plans to lay off 600 dispatch workers by March at sites, including a factory in neighboring Iwata. It plans to begin paying the tuition fees as early as the beginning of next year. The school gives lessons in Japanese and the mother tongues of the children. A former Suzuki employee responsible for the hiring of foreign staff opened the school in 2003. It became a vocational school in 2004. Suzuki and other local businesses donate about 20 million yen annually to the school. Currently attending the school are 101 children, aged 4 to 17, of dispatch and other workers from Peru, Brazil and other countries. Monthly tuition fees range from 15,000 yen to 20,000 yen. However, 12 children dropped out in October and November, saying they were unable to pay their fees because their parents had been laid off. Ten more children whose parents have recently been made unemployed have informed the school they cannot pay the tuition from the start of 2009.
