information about Fukushima published in English in Japanese media info publiée en anglais dans la presse japonaise
21 Mars 2013
March 18, 2013
The labor ministry will launch a project in fiscal 2013 to help people who were forced to evacuate from Fukushima Prefecture after the March 2011 disaster find jobs so they can return home.
The ministry will also help people who fled after the Great East Japan Earthquake and the outbreak of the nuclear crisis to find rented accommodation. The envisioned project was prompted by the fact that many evacuees are reluctant to return due to job shortages, even in areas where the effects of radiation have decreased.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry will open a support desk for evacuees in Tokyo and the prefectures of Yamagata, Niigata, Saitama and Osaka, where many disaster victims now live. Similar support for evacuees living in Fukushima Prefecture will also be expanded.
According to the Fukushima prefectural government, about 57,000 residents had evacuated outside the prefecture as of February.
Some local municipalities have begun to urge such people to return home, as two years have passed since the disaster, but the results have been disappointing.
An intermittent survey of evacuees conducted jointly from August through January by the Reconstruction Agency, eight municipalities near Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 power plant and Fukushima Prefecture found that most respondents had not returned to their hometowns because of high radiation.
However, 20 percent to nearly 50 percent of evacuees in seven of the eight municipalities said they had not returned because they would have no job even if they did go back.
Similar tendencies are said to have been seen among evacuees from areas with lower radiation worries, comparatively far from the plant.
Multiple answers were allowed, and the surveyed people differed by municipality, ranging from heads of households to those aged 18 or over. The eight municipalities are Katsurao, Okuma, Futaba, Iitate, Tamura, Tomioka, Naraha and Namie.
In the envisioned project, special counselors will be stationed at Hello Work public job placement centers in Tokyo and Yamagata, Niigata, Saitama and Osaka prefectures to provide evacuees with comprehensive support.
The counselors will help evacuees find jobs that meet their needs and provide them with such information as vacancies in rental accommodations, which will be collected by the ministry's Fukushima labor bureau through local municipalities.
According to the labor bureau, the ratio of job offers to applicants in Fukushima Prefecture rose to 1.23-to-1 in January from 0.49-to-1 immediately after the disaster, reflecting a labor shortage mainly in the construction industry on the back of reconstruction demand.
There is, however, a gap between the nature of the jobs available and the wishes of job seekers, who want stable labor conditions such as work as a regular employee.
Only about 40 percent of job offers were for regular employment. Clerical jobs are particularly sought after, but the ratio of such job offers to applicants was 0.38-to-1.
The ratio has also been pushed up as the number of job seekers dwindled with the decrease in residents. The key question is how many jobs the new support desks can introduce that will satisfy the needs of job seekers.
The ministry will organize job fairs in Tokyo and Osaka, inviting companies that have offices in Fukushima Prefecture, to help evacuees living in the Kinki region and surrounding areas, as well as in the Tokyo metropolitan area, find jobs so they can return to their hometowns.
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