10/04 Recovery panel to include govs, architect

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Architect Tadao Ando and scriptwriter Makiko Uchidate will be among the members of a government panel that will draft recovery programs for areas devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, it has been learned.

According to government sources, Prime Minister Naoto Kan also has decided to appoint the governors of Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima prefectures--the three most severely damaged by the disaster--to ensure voices from the private sector and disaster areas are heard.

Kan is personally selecting members of the recovery initiative commission, which is to be launched Monday, one month after the disaster.

National Defense Academy President Makoto Iokibe has been informally appointed panel chairman. Members also likely will include Keio University President Atsushi Seike and Takashi Mikuriya, a professor of political science at the University of Tokyo.

"I'd like to tackle the rehabilitation [of disaster areas] based not on the idea of recreating Tohoku as it was before, but of creating a much better Tohoku and Japan," Kan told Miyagi Gov. Yoshihiro Murai, who visited the Prime Minister's Office on Friday.

"I want members of the commission to express a wide variety of opinions without hesitation," the prime minister said.

According to the plan, task forces will be formed under the commission to tackle such issues as revitalization of local communities, welfare, the disposal of rubble and taxes.

The task forces' proposals will be submitted to the government headquarters, tentatively called the rehabilitation headquarters, in which the prime minister and all Cabinet members will participate. The headquarters will draft and implement concrete recovery plans based on the proposals.

Some members of the ruling and opposition parties have called on the government to establish an organization with stronger authority based on a law, modeled after the Teito Fukkoin government organization set up after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. However, the prime minister is planning to establish the commission through a Cabinet order, the sources said.

Since laws must be created and revised to establish a government organization similar to Teito Fukkoin, Kan apparently believes that negotiations between the ruling and opposition parties to gain Diet approval would take too much time.

(Apr. 10, 2011)