Amid a $35 billion effort to clean up the damage wrought by nuclear fallout from the Fukushima nuclear plant, Japan is recruiting homeless people and paying them minimum wage to help.
They are being paid to work in “an area of Northern Japan larger than Hong Kong.”
According to Reuters, three years after “multiple meltdowns at… Fukushima” efforts to clean up the mess are running behind schedule. One of the reasons for the delay is a shortage of workers.
Recruiters go out in the morning and round up homeless people in and around train stations, recruiting them to go to Fukushima and take part in cleanup. This recruitment process has caused tensions to rise–and led to arrests of certain recruiters–after major contractors involved in the cleanup process accused “Japanese gangsters” of infiltrating the ranks of their low-tier workers and then taking them away to work cleanup for other companies.
On the other side of the coin, some homeless recruits are complaining that contractors are not keeping their end of the bargain regarding pay. One “55-year-old homeless man was reportedly being paid the equivalent of $10 for a full month of work” instead of the wage he was promised when recruited.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins
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