Foreign laborers sought to decommission reactors

FOREIGN laborers with sufficient Japanese-language skills will for the first time be enlisted to decommission the reactors at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant under new visa rules, the station’s operator said yesterday.

The step comes after Japan this month launched new visa statuses to attract more foreign workers and ease the impact of the nation’s shrinking workforce and population.

Operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) has previously used highly skilled foreign engineers in Fukushima but generally refrained from accepting foreign laborers in work crews there — in part because the jobs require strong command of the Japanese language to understand technical instructions.

However, the government’s new visas are available to foreigners with strong Japanese language skills in 14 sectors suffering critical labor shortages such as construction, farming and elderly care. “The (visa) system is designed for people with certain skill sets and language skills. We will accept foreigners who are industry-ready,” TEPCO spokeswoman Mayumi Sugahara said.

Roughly, 7,200 people work at the Fukushima plant at any given time, and Sugahara said TEPCO has not had difficulty attracting enough workers. But Japan’s construction sector as a whole has long faced a severe labor shortage, despite earlier efforts to loosen visa requirements for foreign workers.

Adding to the labor crunch, Tokyo is currently experiencing a construction boom ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games.

The government hopes to attract roughly 350,000 foreign workers over the next five years.

The new visa system has been viewed as a policy shift away from Japan’s traditional strict immigration program.

(AFP)