The Japanese government announced late Friday that it had decided to replace its top two public welfare officials in a bid to make a new start after a massive pension debacle.
Welfare minister Hakuo Yanagisawa said in an evening press conference that he will replace Social Insurance Agency Director General Seiji Murase and vice welfare minister Tetsuo Tsuji - the top career bureaucrat at the ministry, which oversees the agency.Murase will be replaced by Taiji Banno, former career bureaucrat who now sits on the board of national network Japan Broadcasting Corporation.
The new vice welfare minister will be Takeshi Erikawa, a former vice minister at the Cabinet Office and currently an adviser at Nikko Financial Intelligence Inc.
The changes, which will become effective on August 31, come after the Social Insurance Agency admitted to losing millions of payment records due to years of mismanagement. Pensions are a sensitive issue in Japan, where the elderly population is rapidly growing.
Murase, a former executive of a private casualty insurance firm, took the job in 2004 as the first private-sector person to lead the agency, which has always been criticised for its inefficiency. However, a series of scandals and administrative mistakes by agency staff have diverted Murase's attention from reform to crisis management, and he has reportedly been asking to be replaced.
"When thinking about the pension record problem and the complete reform of the Social Insurance Agency, we should not just promote people from within, but I felt it would be more appropriate to have fresh sets of eyes to look at the administration," Yanagisawa told a press conference Friday night, announcing the personnel changes. Deep-rooted pensions mismanagement was seen as a major factor in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's massive defeat in the July 29 upper house elections.