JAPAN: Labour brokers recruit Japan's homeless to clean-up radioactive hotpots near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant

Record ID: 216081

  • Title: JAPAN: Labour brokers recruit Japan's homeless to clean-up radioactive hotpots near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant
  • Date: 30th December 2013
  • Summary: SENDAI CITY, MIYAGI PREFECTURE, JAPAN (RECENT - DECEMBER 19, 2013) (REUTERS) MOON ABOVE SENDAI STATION EXTERIOR OF STATION FIRST TRAIN ARRIVING AT STATION HOMELESS MAN SLEEPING IN STATION HOMELESS MAN COUGHING WHILE LYING ON GROUND HOMELESS MAN SITTING ON CARDBOARD BOX IN STATION PEOPLE WALKING PAST HOMELESS MAN SLEEPING IN STATION 57-YEAR-OLD HOMELESS MAN, SHIZUYA NISHIY
  • Embargoed: 14th January 2014 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Japan
  • Country: Japan
  • Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes,Politics,People,Energy
  • Reuters ID: LVA9F77GJJU7LVRZMK2JRAU2H042
  • Story Text: It is five o'clock in the morning and close to freezing point in Sendai, 360 kilometres (200 miles) north of Tokyo.
    For those living rough, this station is one of the warmest places to sleep, however, their refuge is also a recruiting ground for labour brokers. The men in Sendai Station are potential labourers who can be dispatched to contractors in Japan's nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of $100 a head.
    Shizuya Nishiyama, who is 57, has been homeless for a year and sleeps on a cardboard box, next to a shop window in Sendai station.
    Twice Nishiyama says he has been recruited to scrub down radioactive hotpots in Fukushima, 80 kilometres (50 miles) to the south.

    "We're an easy target for recruiters. We turn up here with all our bags, wheeling them around and around the station and we're easy to spot," Nishiyama said as the first passengers of the day hurried to their trains.
    Nishiyama's first employer in Sendai offered him $90 a day for his first job clearing tsunami debris unrelated to the Fukushima site. However, he was made to pay as much as $50 a day for food and lodging. He also was not paid on the days he was unable to work. On those days, though, he would still be charged for room and board. He decided he was better off living on the street than going into debt.

    "They say to us: 'Are you looking for work? Are you hungry?' And if we haven't eaten anything, they then offer to find us a job," Nishiyama added.
    Almost three years ago, a massive earthquake and tsunami levelled villages across Japan's northeast coast and set off multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Today, the most ambitious radiation clean-up ever attempted is running behind schedule. The effort is being dogged by both a lack of oversight and a shortage of workers, according to a Reuters analysis of contracts and interviews with dozens of those involved.
    In Sendai, the largest city on Japan's tsunami-devastated northeast coast, homeless people like Nishiyama have flocked here in the hope of finding reconstruction work in the disaster zone.
    Activists have said that those jobs are increasingly hard to find. Now more than 300 people live rough in Sendai, twice as many as before the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
    For companies operating near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, that has presented an opportunity.

    "There's this problem where workers are reaching their radiation limits in Fukushima, and are not allowed to continue working. There's actually an overall shortage of people available to do those dangerous jobs. So it's to make up that shortfall that homeless people are now being made to risk their lives," said Yasuhiro Aoki, a Baptist pastor and head of a support group for Sendai's homeless.
    The shortage of those willing and available to take on dirty and dangerous jobs in Fukushima has not pushed wages higher, workers, lawyers and volunteers said.
    Responsibility for monitoring the hiring, safety records and suitability of hundreds of small firms involved in Fukushima's decontamination rests with the top contractors, including Kajima Corp, Taisei Corp and Shimizu Corp, officials said.
    As a practical matter, however, many of the construction companies involved in the clean-up say it is impossible to monitor what is happening on the ground because of the multiple layers of contracts for each job that keep the top contractors removed from those doing the work.
    Wage data provided by police in one investigated case showed that after deductions for food and lodging, workers were left with an hourly rate of about $6, just below the minimum wage equal to about $6.50 per hour in Fukushima. Some of the homeless men ended up in debt after fees for food and housing were deducted, police said.
    Aoki explained the homeless people's situation further.

    "Without any information about potential dangers, many homeless people are just put into dormitories - and the fees for lodging and food automatically docked from their wages. Then, at the end of the month, they're left with no pay at all," Aoki said.
    Former wrestling promoter Seiji Sasa, 67 has recruited Sendai's homeless for more than two decades.
    He said he earns about 100 dollars for every introduction, and many of his recent hires are likely to end up in a radioactive workplace but that he didn't ask questions.

    "I don't ask any questions, that's not my job. I just find people and send them to work. I send them and get money in exchange. That's it. I don't get involved in what happens after that," Sasa said.

    "As a broker, it's thanks to homeless people that I've been able to eat. I introduce them to work, receive money in return, and make my living. If what I did killed homeless people, then I'd be out of a job," he added.
    For Nishiyama, radiation is the last thing on his mind. He just wants to make it through the winter and prepare his cardboard box against the cold of the nights to come.
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