Roughly 30 percent of householders aged under 60 who have been sheltering in Tokyo since evacuating from their quake-hit hometowns are unemployed, a Tokyo Metropolitan Government survey has shown.
The recession, difficulties finding suitable jobs and uncertainty over whether evacuees will be able to return home in the foreseeable future appear to have prevented them from finding new jobs.
The metropolitan government sent questionnaires to 3,802 household heads aged under 60 who were living in Tokyo as of February after evacuating from their hometowns in northeastern Honshu following the March 11, 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and ensuing crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant. A total of 1,519 of the householders, or about 40 percent, responded.
When the triple disasters occurred, 80 percent of the householders were living in Fukushima Prefecture, 13 percent were in Miyagi Prefecture and 5 percent were in Iwate Prefecture.
When asked about their employment situation, 50 percent of the respondents replied that they had full-time jobs and 10 percent answered they were working on a part-time basis while 8 percent said they had short-term temporary work.
The ratio of those who were out of a job stood at 32 percent, far above the 9 percent recorded before the quake.
Of the unemployed household heads surveyed, 43 percent were hunting for new jobs while 37 percent said they had no plan to look for employment. As to the reasons why they were not looking for jobs, many answered they were not sure how long they could live in their current residences, while others said they wanted to work in their hometowns, although there were no prospects of being able to go home in the foreseeable future.
Half of the respondents said they wanted to go home but were unsure when they could do so, while 37 percent said they preferred to settle down in the capital.
The biggest reason people cited for being unsure about when they could go home was uncertainty over when their neighborhoods would be decontaminated. Most of those who wanted to settle down in Tokyo cited concerns that radiation from the crippled nuclear plant could adversely affect their health if they went home.
* Mainichi Shimbun, April 13, 2012
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Many disaster-hit farmers unable to restart farming: gov’t report
TOKYO (Kyodo) — More than half of farmers affected by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster in northeastern Japan remain unable to resume farming activities, the government said in its annual report released Tuesday.
With only about 40 percent of farmers who suffered tsunami damage having restarted production, restoring the farming industry in the disaster-affected area continues to be the government’s agricultural policy priority, the fiscal 2011 white paper for agriculture said.
The government estimated the total disaster damage in the agricultural, forestry and fishery industries at 2.43 trillion yen.
Kyodo Press, April 24, 2012
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