TOKYO, (MILLAT+APP/AFP) – Thousands of Japanese
evacuees from Fukushima should keep getting free housing, supporters said Tuesday, as the local government readies to yank support offered after the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
Some 27,000 so-called voluntary evacuees — people who chose to leave
their homes in the region after the 2011 accident due to safety concerns — are set to lose the six-year-old housing subsidy at the end of March.
That means leaving state-paid housing in other parts of Japan and
possibly returning to homes in the region where a quake-sparked tsunami swamped the nuclear plant, sending some reactors into meltdown and spewing radiation into the environment.
“If we lose this housing support — the only lifeline we have —
single-mother evacuees like me will fall into poverty,” Noriko Matsumoto told a press briefing in Tokyo organised by activists.
Matsumoto left her family’s home 50 kilometres (31 miles) from the
plant, after her daughter, then 12, began suffering an array of health problems, including nose bleeds and nausea.
Matsumoto, 55, who now lives with her daughter in Kanagawa, about 250
kilometres from the plant, said she also developed serious health disorders
after the accident, including hormonal disorders and a non-cancerous tumour in her thyroid.
“I am furious that the central government and Fukushima prefecture
stigmatised and now abandoned us,” she told reporters.
A local government spokesman said areas not covered by the original
evacuation orders have been deemed safe to live in.
“The environment is safe for leading a normal life and that means we
are no longer in a position to provide temporary housing,” he told AFP.
Some evacuees will still be eligible for a small housing subsidy, the
spokesman added.
The 2011 accident drove more than 160,000 people from their homes,
some by evacuation order and others by choice.