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On May 18, DPJ Secretary General Katsuya Okada met with local assembly leaders and other local authority officials from Namie Town and Iitate Village, which are located within the restricted zone and the planned evacuated zone designated following the accident at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. On the agenda were local calls for assistance with a view to bringing the nuclear accident to a speedy resolution and stabilizing the livelihoods of evacuees.
The Chairman of Namie Town Assembly, Kazuhiro Yoshida, delivered a series of requests focusing on compensation and livelihood assistance for victims of the disasters. He went on to point out that there had been delays in carrying out maritime searches for bodies of victims of the earthquake and tsunami, and called for efforts to be made to carry out further searches. He also urged for improvements to be made in the process that allows residents of Namie to return temporarily to their homes to collect possessions etc. Due to the fact that it was likely to take a considerable amount of time to enable all those who wished to visit their homes to do so, he asked for an increase in the number of buses provided, for the introduction of larger buses, and for evacuees to be able to take home their own vehicles.
Yoshida also reported that there were calls from Namie residents for a health care system to be put in place, in view of the potential risks residents faced from internal radiation exposure due to the radiation that had been dispersed in the locality. Okada emphasized that long-term measures, beginning with health checks, would be carried out by the state. There were also calls for the state to take responsibility not just for the construction of temporary housing, but also to construct temporary factory sites and provide the necessary machinery so that factories that had been affected would be able to restart operations. The state was also urged to take measures to deal with small and medium sized businesses having to take out duplicate loans to cover disaster-related expenses.
In the meeting with Iitate Village officials that followed, Iitate Village Assembly Chairman Chohei Sato called for a speedy response with regard to compensation and temporary advance payments for agricultural and stock-rearing products. Okada stated that the DPJ was intending to petition the government regarding this, based on the perception that “the determination of compensation amounts for livestock in particular must be decided as soon as possible.” With regard to the construction of temporary housing, village residents hoped to live in an area as close as possible to their original homes, and so there were calls from locals to find suitable land as soon as possible, and to implement cleaning and improvement of contaminated soil at an early date.
Okada stated that he would call on the government to implement recovery and reconstruction measures that reflect the voices of local residents, by continuing to listen to the wishes of the disaster-affected areas. These would include the speedy stabilization of the situation at the nuclear plant, the issue of elementary schools for children in the disaster areas, and ensuring that thorough measures to guarantee employment are included in reconstruction projects.
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