April 10, 2011, 10: 42 am EDT by John Brinsley and Aki Ito
(Updates casualty tolls at paragraph 20).
April 11 (Bloomberg) - a week before become ground zero for most of the world since 1986 nuclear crisis, the plant in
Fukushima Dai-Ichi offered $ 11 per hour for maintenance work full time in a area of
Japan which was lagging even before the tsunami and the earthquake last month hit.The wage, the same as the country of Corp. to work part-time at
Tokyo McDonald, demonstrates the magnitude of the economic blight in the Northern Tohoku region and indicates the cities may never recover from the disaster. Some 28 000 people are dead or missing and 150,000 are homeless in Tohoku, where 25% of the population is 65 years of age or more and job seekers than jobs by two to one.Once rescue and clean-up is complete, Government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan must decide whether to rebuild houses, roads, and businesses or move tens of thousands of people. The challenge: structuring investment plans to bring private jobs beyond the bump in short-term public works. "Very roughly put, it will not many people left in these communities,"Special Advisor to Takayoshi Igarashi, Kan on the decline of the population and the rural disintegration, said in an interview. "Elderly will go far and youth will certainly leave for
Tokyo." The Government is now facing the choice of whether to invest in the reconstruction of these regions or leaving this terrible. "The successive Governments and
Tokyo Electric Power Co. contributed money in the construction of bridges, roads and soccer stadiums in places
like the town of Ohkuma of
Fukushima, who has failed to revive economies in Northeast, said Daniel Aldrich, author of ' Site fights: divisive facilities and civil society to the
Japan and to the West. "The problem with these"empty zone projects", it is that they temporarily create construction jobs evaporate when the work is done, he said. "Exponentially earthquake of magnitude 9 Higher'The and waves as high as 15 m (49 ft) damaged or destroyed more than 200,000 buildings and levelled whole cities in the northeast of the
Japan. Sony Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and Sapporo Holdings Ltd. are among the companies which have closed plant damage that estimates of the Government is as high as 25 billion yen ($295 billion).Igarashi said that
Japan should "at least" 20 billion yen to rebuild the area. If residents evacuated nearly of the nuclear power cannot return, the amount of necessary expenses "will be exponentially greater," he said.The disaster struck an economy already mired in its second decade of stagnation and deflation. The
Japan national debt is twice the size of the gross domestic product, the result of the soaring costs of welfare and the decline in revenue. The benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock average has fallen 6.4 per cent since March 10, the day before the disaster struck.Six prefectures of VegetablesTohoku contaminated, with a population of approximately $ 9 million, have an average income per capita of 2.6 million yen, 15% lower than the average national. In the Prefecture of Aomori, in addition to the North, population fell by 4.4% between 2005 and 2010, the second largest drop, in the country as young
Japanese left to find work in major cities.Radiation emitted by the
Fukushima complex approximately 220 kilometres (137 miles) North of
Tokyo has contaminated vegetables and seafood in Tohoku, which depends on agriculture, fishing and manufacturing. Spinach and deliveries of milk have been limited in the region that represents more than a quarter of the
Japan rice production. Cobalt, cesium, radioactive iodine was found in the sea nearby.Secretary General of the Government Yukio Edano said April 1, that the evacuation of residents near the plant could be "in the long term."The low-skilled jobs, "the biggest problem is that of nuclear power," said Itsunori Onodera, a legislator with the opposition of the Liberal Democratic Party, whose hometown of Kesennuma was ravaged by the tsunami. "If the area of nuclear contamination spreads, people do live there and that there will no be no reconstruction."Most of the jobs in the region requires no university degrees or advanced training, Aldrich said. Executives who work in the region come from
Tokyo and home on weekends and some cities in the 1980s, had several schools have consolidated a.Three of the prefectures - Miyagi, Iwate and
Fukushima - 99 per cent of the victims of the disaster. Kesennuma had a population of 74 000 pre-quake. Now, 2,120 people are dead or missing and 8,897 are in evacuation centers, according to the website of the city.Pledged to democratic party CooperationThe power of
Japan and the opposition are engaged to work in the financing of recovery and the administration plans to create a reconstruction agency to oversee the reconstruction effort. Kan, said the first package of spending to cope with the relief and reconstruction will be compiled this month, without giving details. He promised that farmers will be reimbursed for their losses and promised "full-scale restoration" of the region.Edano said April 7 that an initial package of spending could be as much as 4 billion yen. The opposition Liberal Democratic Party called for an effort of 5 billion yen, about $ 5 billion more 1997 rescue the Korea of the Sud.La disaster has also created an opportunity to rebuild parts of Tohoku, experts say. The first priority will be be housing for those who have lost their homes, said Itsuki Nakabayashi, a Professor of engineering at
Tokyo Metropolitan University, which specializes in disaster recovery and mitigation. After that, the Government should consider tax cuts and other incentives to attract companies in the region, he said.A new airport to Sendai and best links road and telecommunication are experts say will allow the region to rejuvenate. "More attractive Tohoku'"Here is a tremendous opportunity to create a more attractive Tohoku, away from the State of concrete,"said Robert Mason, expert in environmental policy at the Temple University in Philadelphia, who lived in the
Japan and studied its spread. "What is required is a measured approach of ' what should we rebuild, where we must rebuild?" "The DPJ's kan in 2009 beats the LDP, which governed
Japan almost without interruption in the post-war period in part by denouncing the support of the LDP for projects that have benefited from the construction of public works industry." Reconstruction of the Tohoku with a view towards sustainability could be a way for Kan to realize its promise to campaign "concrete people." "Unless you build new industries and in the long term, children will leave," said Aldrich. "The long-term problem is that many incentives provided have been these infrastructure projects, and they were not thinking about how to revive these economies."
-With the help of Takashi Hirokawa, Kanoko Matsuyama, Patrick Harrington and Sachiko Sakamaki in Tokyo. Editors: Peter Hirschberg, Patrick Harrington
To contact the reporters on this story: John Brinsley in Tokyo at the jbrinsley@bloomberg.net; Aki Ito in Tokyo at the aito16@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg to phirschberg@bloomberg.net
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