Tokyo lacks effective policies to help foreign residents survive a massive disaster, which is one of the most urgent challenges facing the metropolitan government, a special antidisaster adviser to Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara said Wednesday.
Speaking at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan on the largest-scale disaster relief drill scheduled to be held Sunday in Tokyo, Toshiyuki Shikata, former commander in chief of the Ground Self-Defense Force's Northern Army, said the metropolitan government should establish a system to provide foreign residents with information in English and other languages as much as in Japanese in case a disaster strikes.
"We are required to respond urgently to this problem," Shikata said. "But you have to give up until then because you are in a country with a poor crisis-management policy."
There are about 700 citizens who speak 23 languages registered with the metropolitan government as volunteers to support foreign residents in case of disaster, according to a Metropolitan Government official.
Shikata, however, said the volunteers may also become victims in a disaster, and that if that happens, there are no other alternatives for foreign residents.