The Abe administration has massively increased budgetary outlays for public works projects as part of recovery efforts from the Great East Japan Earthquake, but some residents at the local level are complaining the funds are not going where they are needed most.
The Abe administration has massively increased budgetary outlays for public works projects as part of recovery efforts from the Great East Japan Earthquake, but some residents at the local level are complaining the funds are not going where they are needed most.
Since Shinzo Abe took over as prime minister in December 2012, spending on national roads has increased at least eight-fold compared to the fiscal 2010 budget.
"There are other projects the money could go to," said Yasutada Onodera, 38, who operates a chain of coffee shops in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture.
On Dec. 7, 2012, a tsunami warning was issued following an earthquake that registered 5 on the Japanese scale of 7 that struck the Tohoku region. At that time, Onodera tried to flee in his car from the temporary shop he was in just 500 meters from the ocean to higher ground. However, traffic tie-ups prevented many from effectively evacuating the area.
Onodera said he feels not much has been learned from the March 11, 2011, twin disasters.
"The reason so many people died was not because the coastal levee was too low, but because they could not flee due to the traffic jams," Onodera said.
He and some of his neighbors lobbied the city government to construct more roads to help ensure that people could reach higher ground more quickly if the need should arise. Nothing has come of that effort so far, he said.
A big reason for the massive increase in spending from 2010 to 2012 was due in part to a decision by the then-ruling Democratic Party of Japan to freeze road construction if there was no realistic way to complete the project within three years. In fiscal 2010, 144 such projects were frozen, and only 13.7 billion yen ($134 million) from the initial budget was allocated for those projects.
While the DPJ government would go on to more than double road construction spending on the same frozen projects for the following 2011 fiscal year, the figure still pales in comparison to that budgeted by the Abe administration.
The compilation of the supplementary budget for fiscal 2012 and the initial budget for fiscal 2013 included road construction expenditures for those projects totaling 113.6 billion yen.
In the meantime, about 1 trillion yen has been set aside to construct higher levees along the coast of the disaster-stricken areas.
An official with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism touched on the history of the decision-making process.
Immediately after the twin disasters, a number of local governments asked the ministry to include funds to build evacuation routes in their budget. However, the Reconstruction Agency instead emphasized the need to rebuild levees that were damaged by the disasters, the official said.
"While huge amounts of funding were earmarked to go to levee reconstruction, no money for small roads costing several tens of millions of yen was approved," the ministry official said. "The reason is the rigidness of the entire system."
The Abe administration is continuing its emphasis on public works projects in its fiscal 2014 budget, with a 2-percent increase to a total of about 6 trillion yen. Of that amount, about 2 trillion yen is being set aside for road construction.
(This article was written by Yo Noguchi and Eiji Zakoda.)