Behind NHK’s Lenient Disciplinary Actions Against Managers: “Admonishment and Dismissal for Illegally Claiming Taxi Fees

On June 24, NHK announced that Mr. A, a male manager in his 50s working at the International Broadcasting Station, had been given an admonitory dismissal.

During the two and a half years from June 2019 to January this year, including the time when he was at his previous station, Kumamoto Broadcasting Station, he had used cab tickets worth about 700,000 yen 323 times, and had also illegally received money for train fare and other expenses, according to the report.

This is an unbecoming behavior for an employee of a public broadcasting station, but an NHK staff member who knew Mr. A said, “I knew this would happen someday. What does this mean?

It was said that Mr. A never did his job. It was said that Mr. A never worked. Soon after, I couldn’t find him anywhere, and when I searched around the bureau, I found him always sleeping in the nap room. At night, he would say, “I’m going to make my rounds,” and go off somewhere with a cab ticket. There was no need for the desk clerk to go on night rounds himself, and it was clearly unnatural. When the punishment was announced, I thought, ‘Oh, I knew it. ……

According to NHK, when questioned about the situation, Mr. A explained that he sometimes took a cab home because he was tired. He said that he took a cab to go home in Tokyo and charged the company for the cab fare, but the cab fare from NHK in Shibuya to his home cost at most 2,000 yen.

The cab fare from NHK in Shibuya to his home was only 2,000 yen at the most.

There were times when he slept in the nap room almost from the time he arrived at the office, and some bureaucrats would make fun of him, saying, “Aren’t you tired of sleeping?

Another bureau employee, who had worked under Mr. A in the same department as Mr. A, revealed, “The punishment was ‘admonishment and dismissal.

I was surprised that the punishment was ‘admonishment and dismissal. Compared to a disciplinary dismissal, it is a much more lenient measure. I heard that it was because they returned the full amount of the cab fare that caused the problem, but I don’t think it’s enough to return the cab fare from the perspective of a serious employee.

This disciplinary action is for 2019 and onward, but I would like to see an investigation into the earlier years as well. ……”

Regarding Mr. A’s work, this bureau member reveals that he heard this.

During the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics held four years ago, Mr. A worked at the desk of an international broadcasting station in Tokyo as a manuscript checker. I heard that there were times when he could not go to the site to wait for confirmation of the manuscript, even though he had his next assignment.

The International Bureau is a department where specialists in English and other languages gather, and it is a key part of NHK, but Mr. A must not have had the right skills for the job. I always wondered why someone like him was in the International Bureau.

One would think that an “internationally minded” member of the bureau would have been able to imagine the consequences of such an unacceptable use of cabs for personal use. ……