KESENNUMA, Miyagi Prefecture--A man whose home was destroyed in the March 11 tsunami was desperate to work in or around this devastated city he still calls home. So he dropped in an ad hoc consultation center to look for a job.
KESENNUMA, Miyagi Prefecture--A man whose home was destroyed in the March 11 tsunami was desperate to work in or around this devastated city he still calls home. So he dropped in an ad hoc consultation center to look for a job.
He left, still jobless, after a few minutes.
All of the offers he could find at the center, which the city's public employment security office set up in a hotel lobby, were for work outside the prefecture.
"We really appreciate the helping hand extended by people from around the country," he said. "But I cannot easily make a decision to leave my hometown."
In the prefectures hit hard by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, the dire labor situation is adding to the woes of the survivors.
Many of the available jobs are temporary. And many people, like this man in his 50s, refuse to work in areas away from where they were born and raised.
A 60-year-old man who worked in a fish market in Kesennuma said all he feels now are sheer despair and hopelessness.
The man lost his home and job to the tsunami. A few days later, his younger brother, who was helping to operate an evacuation center, died suddenly.
"I received a document for applying for unemployment benefits, but I cannot pick myself up and visit a public employment security office," said the man, who has been staying at a relative's home in Kesennuma.
Others simply cannot work because they are too busy taking care of children and elderly family members who need daily care or have shut themselves up in evacuation centers, according to the Kesennuma public employment security office.
More than 30 percent of about 18,000 eligible people in Kesennuma have applied for unemployment benefits.
An official at the public employment security office said many are trying to get by with unemployment benefits for several months, adding that the number of applicants will continue to grow.
Municipalities are creating jobs for quake victims or helping businesses hire them, with financial support from the central government.
The city of Kamaishi in Iwate Prefecture will take on 250 workers on a temporary basis for such jobs as managing evacuation centers and storing photo albums and other items retrieved from the rubble.
Thirty-five people began working in May on a daily allowance of 6,000 yen ($73.60).
Ayaka Endo, 19, who assists in payments of livelihood support, had been working at a marine product processing company since January.
"I want to be of service (for quake victims)," said Endo, who lost her job April 9 after the company's new factory in Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, was washed away by the tsunami.
In the broader Kamaishi area, which includes Otsuchi, 60 percent of business offices and factories were damaged in the disaster, and more than 2,000 people lost their jobs.
The Iwate prefectural government drew up a six-year plan in late April to overcome what it calls the "employment crisis" caused by the disaster.
As the first step, it compiled a 5.8-billion-yen supplementary budget to employ 5,000 quake victims on a short-term basis.
An estimated 70 percent of 16,000 business offices and factories in the coastal region of the prefecture were affected by the disaster.
"We are simply buying time because the program can offer only temporary jobs," said Akihiko Tsugaruishi, a prefectural government official in charge of employment measures. "People will disappear from our prefecture unless we quickly pave the way for a full-fledged industrial recovery."
The central government plans to create or maintain about 44,000 jobs nationwide, including more than 16,000 in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, by expanding employment funds for prefectural governments and increasing subsidies to businesses.
(This article was compiled from reports by Hiroyuki Komuro, Miki Moromugi and Chisato Yokota.)