TOKYO - JAPANESE volunteers on Wednesday began the year-end tradition of helping the needy at a Tokyo public park, with the focus on assisting those who have lost jobs in the global economic crisis.

Two dozen non-profit groups have set up a camp in Hibiya Park in central Tokyo to offer job counselling over the New Year holiday week, to fill the gap left when public job centres are shut.

'More and more people are ending up on the streets after finding no place to sleep, no money to buy food and no place to go,' said Makoto Yuasa, an anti-poverty campaigner who helped to organise the camp.

Lawyers will volunteer their time to help those who have been wrongfully sacked or forced to leave factory dormitories, he said.

The global economic crisis battered the Japanese economy in the second half of 2008, pushing household names, such as Toyota and Sony, to announce massive job cuts and shut factories. -- AFP