Reports that central government organizations have for decades been padding their hiring rates for people with disabilities — when in fact they failed to employ enough such people to meet the legally required quotas — are appalling. The law for promoting the employment of people with disabilities aims to end discrimination against such people and expand job opportunities for them by requiring that they make up at least a certain portion of the workforce at government organs and private sector companies. The mandatory rates are higher for national and local government bodies because they are supposed to set examples for the private sector. Officials need to review their practices to see if what they have been doing serves the purpose of the system.

Under the law, every national and local government organization is required to employ people with disabilities — in principle those officially certified as having physical, mental or intellectual disabilities — to account for 2.5 percent of the staff on its regular payroll (with the ratio gradually raised to reach that level in April). Records show that as of June last year, 33 administrative organs of the national government, including ministries and agencies, together hired some 6,900 people with disabilities, accounting for 2.49 percent of their workforce on average.

However, suspicions have surfaced that roughly 10 ministries and agencies have in fact padded their figures by including in their head counts personnel with relatively mild disabilities who do not carry official certificates. Details will have to wait for an ongoing probe by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, but the practice at these organizations has reportedly been going on since the 1970s, when employment of people with disabilities for a set portion of the workforce became mandatory. If people with mild disabilities are not counted, the employment rate at many of the ministries and agencies is believed to be less than 1 percent.