The health ministry intends to require family members living with elderly people who receive pension benefits to report to the Japan Pension Service if the elderly person goes missing, as part of efforts to prevent relatives from fraudulently collecting the benefits, sources said.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry plans to submit bills to revise related laws, including the National Pension Law, to the Diet in March at the earliest.

Currently, the ministry obliges family members living with pensioners to report the deaths of elderly people.

In summer 2010, a man in Adachi Ward, Tokyo, who would have been 111 years old if still alive, was discovered to have died about 30 years ago.

However, the man's family members had continued to collect his pension benefits through the local government.

Local governments across the country subsequently discovered many incidents in which pensioners registered as living in their cities, towns and villages were actually dead or missing.

These cases prompted the ministry's decision to require family members living with pensioners to file a report with the Japan Pension Service if pensioners' whereabouts are unknown.

When the Japan Pension Service receives a report on a missing case, it will send a notice to the pensioner and request the individual submit documents to confirm his or her safety.

If the organization does not receive any documents, it will halt pension benefit payments temporarily.

If the pensioner is confirmed to have died before the suspension of pension payments, the Japan Pension Service will order their family members to reimburse overpaid benefits for up to the past five years.

The organization has been conducting door-to-door visits of pensioners who have not utilized the medical insurance program for people aged 75 and older to confirm their safety.

It has stopped the payment of pension benefits for 104 people whose deaths were confirmed by the end of August and temporarily suspended pension payments for 873 people who were discovered to be missing.

As another measure to prevent excessive pension payments, the health ministry is considering asking pensioners aged up to 74, who are not covered by the medical insurance system for latter-stage elderly, to regularly file a report to confirm they are alive.