TOKYO, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday approved a draft budget for fiscal 2019 that was amended to incorporate missing costs resulting from the release of faulty jobs data from the labor ministry.
The general-account budget, already approved by the cabinet in December, had to be revised to incorporate an additional 650 million yen (6 million U.S. dollars) to the already record-high 101.46 trillion yen (926 billion U.S. dollars) allocation.
The additional costs added to the general-account budget were a result of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare over the past 15 years not collecting the requisite amount of data.
The release of faulty jobs and wage data spanning a period of a decade or more, has resulted in more than 20 million people not receiving their full benefits.
The scandal has implicated top bureaucrats and officials in the ministry who knowingly and systematically covered up the improper method for collecting the data, which serves as a recognized barometer of the nation's employment situation.
The ministry was revealed to have published key data collected from only a third of the 1,400 companies required to be surveyed in Tokyo since 2004.
The ministry is supposed to survey all businesses with employees totaling at least 500 people to compile its official Monthly Labor Survey.
The improper method used for data collection has led to the government being forced to revise the state budget for fiscal 2019 and address the fact that unemployment insurance and workers' compensation in some fields, applicable to 20.15 million people with up to 56 billion yen (511 million U.S. dollars), has gone unpaid.
