According to the Cabinet Office, the number of consumer consultation centres in local governments is 538 in 2007 whereas it was 407 in 1998. On the other hand, the amount of budget is decreasing year after year: although it was about 16,800,000,000 yen in 1998, it decreased up to 10,800,000,000 yen in 2007.
Consmer centres managed by local government have been contributing for relief of conumer injuries so far; but reduction of budgets pose bad influence to the activities and the pay for consultants.
Local governments do not maintain consumer consultants as fulltime employment for the government to make it easy to cut expense. The term of their employment is relatively short: 13% of consultants are fired within 3 years whereas 38% of them are fired within 5 years; therefore, they remain in relative poverty due to low levels of pay and dependent expenses; their average income is estimated as about 1,800,000 yen; they are not paid enough wages, even if they work overtime; moreover, their traffic expense is cut.
