It is the fourth anniversary of Great East Japan Earthquake.
Deaths by quake and tsunami amount to about sixteen thousands and around
twenty-six hundreds are still missed. In some cities and towns, construction of
new town is ongoing in urgent manners. However, There is no local community
that can have a positive view for the future. Ignoring that obvious fact, the
national government is ready for requiring the people in devastated area to
stand up and walk alone.
The government determined a decade after the earthquake as
period for reconstruction. The first half of it was named “concentrated
reconstruction period,” during which the government would pour every necessary
resource into reconstruction efforts. For those five years, it prepared ¥25
trillion through new income taxation on all the people. The period will end in
March, 2016. The focus now is how to maintain the momentum in the second half
of the reconstruction period.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced in the eve of the anniversary
that he would make a new framework for the second half in his press conference.
“We will support the suffered area as much as possible to support independence
of suffered people and enable each of them to have hopeful vision for the
future,” told Abe. The message was to urge people stop being dependent on national
reconstruction budget that was drying up.
It was Abe administration that tormented the people in suffered
area. Because of Abenomics that devalued Japanese yen, materials for construction
got too expensive for constructors to accept reconstruction contracts.
Construction demands for Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020 chewed up human resource
from suffered area. Unbelievable enough, the national government took advantage
of reconstruction budget for disaster-preventing projects in other region than
Tohoku. It was widely criticized as inappropriate use of tax money.
To prevent another tragedy in the future, cities and towns
are constructing great walls against tsunami in the coastline. Rikuzen-takata
City is accumulating huge amount of soil from hills on devastated lower land
for crating new residential zone. It costs ¥160 billion, paralleled with whole
annual budget of the city for ten years. If the national government stops
providing with subsidy for the project, the city will show extremely ugly shape
of incomplete reconstruction.
The national government cannot stop the support. The
Constitution of Japan guarantees every nation of equality under the law and
minimum quality of healthy and civilized life. Many people in Tohoku are
spending their lives under that line. The government has to support their right
for pursuit of happiness.
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