Japan’s Public Servants say they are buckling under unreasonable work pressures and are calling for a halt to writing speeches.
An in-house survey at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare revealed that lawmakers were constantly requesting help to prepare speeches and reference materials for important meetings, forcing some bureaucrats to work past midnight.
The survey said Public Servants faced hundreds of requests between late 2019 and late last year to prepare speeches for gatherings of support groups in lawmakers’ constituencies, a responsibility that critics contend is not part of their official duties.
The Ministry’s investigation turned up at least 400 instances in which bureaucrats were asked by Diet (Parliament) Members, most of them legislators with the ruling coalition, to draft speeches or provide an outline of information for speaking engagements.
The findings suggest that the Ministry, which is in charge of reforming work practices in both the public and private sectors to reduce excessively long work hours, also needs to revamp the way things work on its home turf.
The study was prompted by a meeting between Minister for Administrative Reform, Taro Kono and members of a group of reform-minded bureaucrats at the Ministry last year.
During the meeting, the bureaucrats complained about the widespread practice among Ministries of having to prepare speeches on behalf of Diet Members.
They said that the work added to their burden as Public Servants.
In ordinary circumstances, speeches for legislators to be given as part of their political activities are supposed to be written by their policy aides.
Manabu Yoshida, the highest-ranking bureaucrat at the Ministry, defended the practice.
“Drafting speeches for and offering related information to Diet Members is not in conflict with the responsibility of Public Servants, as legislators attend such gatherings in the line of duty,” Mr Yoshida said.
Professor of Administrative Law at Kyoto-based Ritsumeikan University, Hirotake Masaki disagreed.
“Serving some lawmakers runs counter to the philosophy of Article 96 of the National Civil Service Law, which defines Public Servants as those serving the general public,” Professor Masaki said.
“It is problematic if the task of writing speeches for lawmakers reaches the point where the original responsibilities of bureaucrats as Public Servants become disrupted,” he said.
Tokyo, 23 November 2021
