Employment of Disaster Victims Supporting Reconstruction: the Role of the Emergency Job Creation Program in Emergency Temporary Housing Support

Abstract

In this paper, issues and future directions will be discussed with reference to examples where the program has been used to employ disaster victims, on  the  perception  that  employing  disaster  victims  as  a  driving  force  for the  revival  of  communities  is  the  primary  significance  of  employing disaster victims. The paper will be composed as follows. First, an outline of  the  Emergency  Job  Creation  Program  will  be  given,  and  the  basic scheme and its implementation in the three disaster-affected prefectures (Iwate,  Miyagi  and  Fukushima)  will  be  summarized.  Next,  temporary housing  support  projects  in  Ofunato  City  and  Otsuchi-cho,  Ishinomaki City,  Tagajo  City,  Watari-cho  and  Iitate-mura  will  be  highlighted,  and comments  added  from  case  studies.  The  role  played  by  this  program  in maintaining  and  reviving  local  communities  will  be  discussed,  based  on the  way  the  program  is  managed  and  on  the  job  content  of  support workers. Finally, the roles and problems of the program at the time of a major  disaster  will  be  extrapolated  from  the  nature  of  these  temporary housing support workers.

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