Kawasaki foreign residents' panel has significant impact on city policy

In the nearly 10 years since its establishment, the Kawasaki City Representatives Assembly for Foreign Residents, an advisory body to the mayor made up of non-Japanese residents, has been largely successful.

As the country's only foreign residents' panel established by ordinance, residents and those involved in the assembly alike say it has helped reflect foreigners' needs in local administration, for example by taking on the issue of housing discrimination.

But the problems facing foreign residents continue to multiply and the assembly's work is far from over, they added.

Kawasaki set up the panel in December 1996 amid a growing movement across the country to demand suffrage at the local government level for foreigners, modeled after similar municipal assemblies in Germany, said Nobuki Yamazaki of the city's Human Rights and Gender Equality Office.

The assembly consists of 26 members who serve two-year terms. They are selected from foreign residents who volunteer to serve. The current body has people from 15 countries and is chaired by Mohammad Anwer, a Pakistani who runs a computer-related business and has lived in Kawasaki for 15 years.

"An increasing number of foreigners in the city do not return to their homelands and continue living here," Anwer said. "So I want them to participate in local communities, and the assembly should keep on working on their problems."

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