Roundup: Japan approves 5-year plan to speed up sluggish post-disaster revitalization work

The Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday approved a five-year reconstruction plan for areas still reeling in the wake of the triple disasters that devastated numerous regions across the northeast of Japan, beginning five years ago to date, with a magnitude-9.0 earthquake striking off the eastern seaboard on March 11, 2011.

On the fifth anniversary of the quake, tsunami and impending nuclear crisis in Fukushima Prefecture, the government said that it had set a target of completing construction of 90 percent of already scheduled housing projects in the hardest-hit regions by fiscal 2017.

Among three of the worst-hit regions in Tohoku were Fukushima, Iwate and Miyage Prefectures where 174,000 people remain displaced, 43,000 of whom are from Fukushima, but have failed to return in the wake of the nuclear crisis there that has yet to be brought under control by the utility's operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO).

TEPCO is struggling to contain massive quantities of contaminated water at its Daiichi complex that houses its battered and faulty reactors, the overall decommissioning of which is expected to take decades longer. Of those displaced in this region, 57,677 people are still living in prefabricated makeshift housing, according to the latest statistics.

With the government also vowing Friday to continue to combat the nuclear crisis up until and beyond fiscal 2021, it reaffirmed that it had allocated 6.5 trillion yen (57.38 billion U.S. dollars) for reconstruction work over a five-year period beginning next month.

Abe has designated the timeframe as a new "reconstruction creation period," and pledged to ensure that those still suffering in each region following the disasters would be helped to restore their lives and feel secure.

"The Cabinet will give its utmost in providing meticulous support to meet the needs of each region so people can lead their lives while feeling secure," Abe told an upper house plenary session Friday, prior to paying his respects alongside Emperor Akihito at a state-sponsored memorial service held at the National Theater in Tokyo, to mourn the 20,000 lives lost since the multiple disasters devastated this island nation.

Following the session, Reconstruction Minister Tsuyoshi Takagi said that the government would do its best to counter the prolonged evacuee crisis and finish all construction work slated within the next five years.

"There are still many people living as evacuees. The government will work toward completing reconstruction in the next five years," Takagi told a press briefing.

But the local municipalities in the disaster-hit regions which are already struggling from shrinking populations, workforces and markets, are now expected to share some of the financial burden of the government's latest allocation.

Such costs for local governments will almost certainly increase in line with the central government's broader plan to spend a total of 32 trillion yen (282.49 billion U.S. dollars) over the decade from 2020 for disaster-linked reconstruction.

Along with rising local costs, as vital revenue from the crisis-hit regions drops commensurate with falling demand and manpower, local municipality leaders have taken aim at the government for its irrational, inefficient and unrealistic approach to essential revitalization work over the past year, more specifically, to bureaucracy and red tape ensuring key projects have become hugely delayed.

They have also spoken out about the key role of the Abe's reconstruction minister being constantly reassigned, as contributing to a huge gulf of understanding between local regions and decisions being made by the central government hundreds of miles away in Nagatacho.

"Japan will continue to show the world the lessons learned from the disaster and the way we are recovering," Abe said at the memorial service Friday afternoon.

But his remarks were not welcomed by all, with one former Fukushima resident saying that the only lessons to be learned were ones of ineptitude and ignorance.

"I left Fukushima towards the end of 2011 because the branch office I was working at was forced to close due to losing a lot of big clients," Isamu Hirose, who worked in the food processing industry told Xinhua.

"I was lucky enough to have relatives living in Tokyo, but there's no chance of me going back, even though my family home is well outside the evacuation zone. It just doesn't feel safe and there's no hope for people wanting to reestablish a happy life there."

"The recovery process is a joke, but not a funny one. It's not a question of money, we're a rich country, it's a question of how it's handled and distributed and the quagmire of regulations that are involved in getting things done. In this respect, Japan has nothing to teach the rest of the world," Hirose said. Endit