» Former TEPCO employee collecting donation to improve working condition of plant workers

2013/12/29

As a former employee of TEPCO., Akihiro Yoshikawa says he knows about the miserable conditions, declining morale and how workers are treated like garbage at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

His mission now is to spread awareness of the circumstances surrounding those struggling to deal with the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and to help them get through the winter.
Yoshikawa and his friends are now collecting donations to deliver heat packs and long underwear to the workers.

Born in Ibaraki Prefecture, Yoshikawa graduated from high school at Toden Gakuen, a now-defunct academy for training future workers of TEPCO, operator of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

Yoshikawa’s work at TEPCO included supervising equipment inspections at the No. 1 plant.

After the tsunami caused the meltdowns at the plant in March 2011, Yoshikawa and his wife fled from the town of Namie. They now live in evacuee housing provided by the prefectural government in the nearby city of Iwaki.

Yoshikawa worked at the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power plant, which was also hit by the tsunami but shut down properly.

Whenever he talked with workers toiling at the No. 1 nuclear plant, he heard about their fears of radiation contamination and low morale.“They used us and threw us away,” he quoted an acquaintance as saying.

Yoshikawa said many workers and their families hide the fact that they work at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant because they fear their children will be bullied and discriminated against for being “exposed to radiation.”

In June last year, Yoshikawa left TEPCO to “spread information about the work conditions from outside the company and deepen society’s understanding of them.”

He has been giving talks in the Tokyo area and elsewhere about the nuclear accident and the workers’ situation.

<Media Report>
Former TEPCO employee seeks donations for downtrodden Fukushima workers (Asahi Newspaper)

Tags:news, plant workers, reactors, TEPCO

• Evacuation orders lifted in 3 municipalities today, one more tomorrow

• Court issues injunction to halt Takahama nuclear reactors

• Anti-nuclear group of India submitted a letter to the Japanese Government to oppose Japan-India nuclear agreement

• World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima closed with “Hiroshima Declaration”