By Robina Asido

At least 65 persons will be sent to Japan under the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme, the Japanese Embassy in the Philippines said Saturday.

Fifty-eight participants of the ninth batch of the Programme will leave the country on Sunday, this was announced during the send-off ceremony at the Japanese Ambassador's residence.

The 58 participants are under the Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) will depart on Sunday. One Coordinator for International Relation (CIR) will leave in August 6 and the rest of the ALTs will be deployed around end-August.

During the ceremony, Japan Ambassador to the Philippines Kazuhiko Koshikawa said "this year, the number of Filipino JET participants has recovered to pre-pandemic levels, which shows the strong demand for Filipino ALTs in Japan and the high popularity of JET Program in the Philippines."

"In bilateral relations, people-to-people exchanges are the core, most important part of bilateral relations and also this JET program we launched more than 30 years ago in Japan. Now we started this program nine years ago in the Philippines," he said.

"This JET participants are going to not in urban area mainly to the local or rural area. They just participate in the Japanese elementary or junior or high school system, and they will make a direct contact (with) Japanese community people with the students and their parents and the local people and that is very important part of this JET program," he added.

Koshikawa said the Japanese government is also eyeing to increase the number of JET Programme participants from the Philippines in the coming years.

"We would like to increase the number of the participants from the Philippines in the years to come, maybe 200... in the future but it depends on the budget and also the quality of human resources," he said.

Hitomi Akihiko, Japan Embassy spokesperson, said due to the increasing number of demands of ALTs, the Japan government may hire more participants to join this year's programme.

Hitomi said a total of 1200 applicants have submitted their application to join this year's JET Programme.

Aside from the Philippines, other countries which are considered as a main source of JET Programme participants include US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Africa. DMS