#Japan #Earthquake: Japanese Government to Set Up "Recovery Agency" for Quick Response to Disaster Relief and Recovery

Hahahahaha I laughed so hard for the first time since the March 11 Japan earthquake.

So they've been criticized (albeit extremely mildly by the Japanese media) for their sheer lack of coordination, incompetence and slow response to the disaster because of their huge bureaucracy. So what do they do? They create more bureaucracy, of course! No joke.

(For more on Japanese bureaucracy, see my post here.)

Yomiuri Shinbun (and others, in Japanese; 8:48AM JST 3/21/2011) reports:

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and the Japanese government have started the planning for setting up the "Recovery Agency" [translation is my guess; "復興庁"in Japanese] to deal with the earthquake relief and recovery.

The Agency is expected to coordinate the various Ministries and provide a quick response. A cabinet minister will be appointed as the head of the Agency.

The concept of the Recovery Agency is based on the similar agency set up right after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, "Imperial Capital [Tokyo] Recovery Agency ["帝都復興院"]. As the cost for relief and recovery may exceed 10 trillion yen by some estimates (US$123 billion), the DPJ and the government have decided that an umbrella organization to oversee the various aspect of relief and recovery is necessary.

At this point, the DPJ and the government are planning to create the Agency under the control of the Cabinet. However, there are others who prefer an independent agency. The details will be worked out in coming days.

($123 billion? I would make it $1 trillion..)

The Great Kanto Earthquake was Magnitude 7.9.

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