Reconstruction Policy In Short

Reaching fifth anniversary from tragic East Japan Great Earthquake, newspapers started series stories that reviewed this post-disaster period. While reconstruction efforts have been coordinated by national government, which has a great amount of budget, the sufferers are still in dire straits. As far as those efforts are under strict control of bureaucracy, flexible application of reconstruction policy is hard to be expected.

Asahi Shimbun reported the situation of “public reconstruction houses,” which residents are aged people in a significant degree. In the research of the newspaper to 52 local governments, 9,787 residents out of 25,860 were at the age of 65 or older at the beginning of this year. 2,920 were in solitude. The ratio jumped up to fifty percent or higher in some cities and towns.

Why old people were concentrated to reconstruction houses? That is because they are recognized by banks as too old to have housing loan for building new private house. Some knows that they cannot live for a long time, even though they would have new private house. Meanwhile, young families can afford to build their own houses, taking advantage of public financial support or preferred loan of banks.

Aging of residents can cause isolation of individuals. In the case of Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake in 1995, a number of residents in public reconstruction houses were isolated after losing young people for running a residents’ association. That situation may lead to an unhappy death with no one’s care. Although local governments are trying to maintain people’s community in temporary houses, human resource for taking care of aged residents in reconstruction houses are in short. National government does not save sufficient budget for the problem.

Mainichi Shimbun picked mismatch of supply and demand in business reconstruction policy. One fourth of new businesses that were applied to a subsidy for business resumption and employment were dismissed with difficulty of keeping labor in suffered area. The subsidy has a condition to employ certain amount of people living in suffered area. That caused most dismissal of the subsidy. Price hike of raw materials, deterioration of management or inability of obtaining land for factory were also the reasons.

People and jobs are highly concentrated in Sendai, the biggest city in Tohoku area. Traditional businesses such as marine product processing factory had been run with low wage. After certain period of losing their employer, workers tend to find new job with higher wage in Sendai. If the government had to help local business, detailed policy must been applied.