Radiation,
desperation and gangsters: Inside the hidden tragedy of Fukushima The
Globe and Mail , 25 Oct 13 ANTONI SLODKOWSKI AND MARI SAITO IWAKI
— Reuters , Oct. 25 2013
“…….The
yakuza connection The
complexity of Fukushima contracts and the shortage of workers have
played into the hands of the yakuza, Japan’s organized crime
syndicates, which have run labour rackets for generations.
Nearly
50 gangs with 1,050 members operate in Fukushima prefecture dominated
by three major syndicates – Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai and
Inagawa-kai, police say.
Ministries,
the companies involved in the decontamination and decommissioning
work, and police have set up a task force to eradicate organized
crime from the nuclear clean-up project. Police investigators say
they cannot crack down on the gang members they track without
receiving a complaint. They also rely on major contractors for
information.
In
a rare prosecution involving a yakuza executive, Yoshinori Arai, a
boss in a gang affiliated with the Sumiyoshi-kai, was convicted of
labour law violations. Arai admitted pocketing around $60,000 over
two years by skimming a third of wages paid to workers in the
disaster zone. In March a judge gave him an eight-month suspended
sentence because Arai said he had resigned from the gang and
regretted his actions.
Arai
was convicted of supplying workers to a site managed by Obayashi, one
of Japan’s leading contractors, in Date, a town northwest of the
Fukushima plant. Date was in the path of the most concentrated plume
of radiation after the disaster.
A
police official with knowledge of the investigation said Arai’s
case was just “the tip of the iceberg” in terms of organized
crime involvement in the clean-up.
A
spokesman for Obayashi said the company “did not notice” that one
of its subcontractors was getting workers from a gangster……..
Decontamination
complaints
In
towns and villages around the plant in Fukushima, thousands of
workers wielding industrial hoses, operating mechanical diggers and
wearing dosimeters to measure radiation have been deployed to scrub
houses and roads, dig up topsoil and strip trees of leaves in an
effort to reduce background radiation so that refugees can return
home.
Hundreds
of small companies have been given contracts for this decontamination
work. Nearly 70 per cent of those surveyed in the first half of 2013
had broken labour regulations, according to a labour ministry report
in July. The ministry’s Fukushima office had received 567
complaints related to working conditions in the decontamination
effort in the year to March. It issued 10 warnings. No firm was
penalized.
One
of the firms that has faced complaints is Denko Keibi, which before
the disaster used to supply security guards for construction site……
“We
were asked to come in and go to work quickly,” an executive of
Denko Keibi said, apologizing to the workers, who later won
compensation of about $6,000 each for unpaid wages. “In hindsight,
this is not something an amateur should have gotten involved in.”
In
the arbitration session Reuters attended, Denko Keibi said there had
been problems with working conditions but said it was still examining
what happened in the December accident.
The
Denko Keibi case is unusual because of the large number of workers
involved, the labour union that won the settlement said. Many workers
are afraid to speak out, often because they have to keep paying back
loans to their employers.
“The
workers are scared to sue because they’re afraid they will be
blacklisted,” said Mitsuo Nakamura, a former day laborer who runs a
group set up to protect Fukushima workers. “You have to remember
these people often can’t get any other
job.”…..http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/radiation-desperation-and-gangsters-inside-the-hidden-tragedy-of-fukushima/article15083978/
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