Japanese broadcaster apologises to parents of reporter who died of overwork

TOKYO: Japan’s public broadcaster apologised yesterday to the parents of a young reporter who died of heart failure after logging 159 hours of overtime in a month.

NHK reporter Miwa Sado, 31, who had been covering political news in Tokyo, was found dead in her bed in July 2013, reportedly clutching her mobile phone.

“The president met the parents at their home and apologised,” an NHK spokesman said.

A government inquest a year after her death ruled that it was linked to excessive overtime. She had taken only two days off in the month before she died.

NHK made the case public four years later, bowing to pressure from Sado’s parents to take action to prevent a recurrence.

The case has again highlighted the Japanese problem of karoshi — meaning death from overwork — and is an embarrassing revelation for NHK, which had campaigned against the nation’s long-hours culture.

Sato covered Tokyo assembly elections for the broadcaster in June 2013 and an upper-house vote for the national Parliament the following month.

She died three days after the upper-house election.

“My heart breaks at the thought that she may have wanted to call me in her last moments,” her mother told Asahi daily.

“With Miwa gone, I feel like half of my body has been torn off. I won’t be able to laugh for real for the rest of my life.”

The revelation shocked the nation as NHK had actively reported deaths at other companies, including the 2015 suicide of a woman at advertising agency Dentsu, who logged more than 100 hours of overtime in one month.

A court here yesterday ordered Dentsu to pay ¥500,000 (RM18,700) as a penalty for allowing its employees, including the young woman, to illegally work excessive overtime hours.

In July, the parents of a 23-yearold worker on Tokyo’s Olympic stadium, who killed himself, applied for compensation and asked the government to recognise his suicide as a case of karoshi.

The worker, who began working in December, clocked 200 hours of overtime in the month before his body was found in April, with a note saying he had “reached the physical and mental limit”. AFP