TOKYO, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) -- A new report compiled by a panel of experts indicated that officials at Japan's labor ministry were responsible for the erroneous complication of key jobs and wages data that has plagued the ministry, sources here said Wednesday.
The panel, comprising statistical experts and lawyers, compiled the report based on interviews held with around 60 officials at the labor ministry and found that numerous officials including high-ranking members, were responsible for the flawed compilation of data.
The report also intimated that a climate of ambivalence existed within the labor ministry towards the gravity and importance of public statistics.
"We will make efforts to regain public trust and ensure a similar case does not happen again," Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Takumi Nemoto was quoted as saying upon receiving the report.
Along with the officials responsible for the compilation of flawed data, opposition parties have taken aim at the Japanese government, accusing it of deliberately releasing faulty data in an attempt to overly qualify the success of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "Abenomics" brand of economic policies.
The opposition camp has also accused Abe of ordering the alteration to the data himself.
According to calls from the opposition camp, the labor ministry may have come under pressure to ensure that the data it was collecting and compiling reflected the success of the prime minister's "Abenomics" economics package.
While admitting that he knew that the wage growth statistics for June 2015 were affected by the changing of samples, Abe said that he himself had not issued any changes to the sampling methodology.
