A new form of compensation

June 26, 2012

TEPCO reveals plan to compensate prefectures for tourism losses

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20120626p2a00m0na005000c.html

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) revealed a plan on June 25 for compensation standards for tourism losses caused by the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant disaster.

The standards cover five Tohoku region prefectures excluding Fukushima Prefecture in cases where there were travel reservations held for groups including youths 18 or under from outside the Tohoku region as of March 11, 2011, the day of the massive earthquake that struck the region. The standards are being considered to cover cases where reservations were canceled by April 22, 2011, and to set the compensation at 50 percent of lost profits.

The plan was revealed at a meeting in Yamagata with an inn and hotel association and was the first time that compensation standards at prefecture level for tourism losses from the nuclear disaster were shown in the Tohoku region outside of Fukushima Prefecture. Matters such as whether shoppers will be covered will be discussed later.

After the meeting, the association's top director, Nobuyuki Sato, said the meeting was "a step forward," but also noted, "There are cases where we don't know (visitors') ages at the reservation stage. We will negotiate on matters including an extension of the period covered." TEPCO plans to give explanations on the plan in four other Tohoku prefectures.

On the reason for making the compensation apply to youths 18 or under, the head of TEPCO's Tohoku compensation consultation center Hideo Komatsu said, "Children are very emotionally sensitive to radiation, so we judged that there was a degree of causal relationship (between their canceled reservations and the nuclear disaster)."