Brussels, 28/03/2011 (Agence Europe) - European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response Kristalina Georgieva has returned from her visit to Japan, shaken by the scale of the unprecedented triple disaster. She nevertheless said that she was sure that Japan would pick itself up and would come back stronger. She was satisfied, too, with the way EU coordinated emergency aid was being channelled, whether it was aid in kind or the €15 million in financial aid (€10 million from the Commission and €5 million from member states). Twenty member states had made contributions, she said, stating that the first shipment of 70 tonnes of aid in kind supplied by the Netherlands, Denmark and Lithuania (72 tents, mattresses, sleeping bags, etc) were currently being distributed, and a second shipment was about to leave. She told reporters in Brussels on Monday 28 March, that blankets were arriving that day from Frankfurt. As she arrived in Tokyo on Thursday 24 March, a French plane was landing with 1,500 tonnes of materials (to purify water and monitor radioactivity). The aid will continue to focus on the supply of food, mattresses, blankets, water purifying equipment and dosimeters, Georgieva said, but will have to be adapted to needs which are changing from day to day.
The Japanese authorities have set up 1,900 temporary shelters for those whose homes have been destroyed or who have been evacuated from the area within 20 kilometres of the Fukushima power plant. Clearing the roads and building temporary housing to free up school buildings are the priorities. While in Japan, the commissioner travelled to the Irabaraki prefecture. In Kita Ibaraki, a port that was totally destroyed, she visited a shelter where 6,000 people, including elderly people, were being accommodated in a primary school. We could see for ourselves that aid was getting through to the local level, she said. Inland, in Tuskuba, she visited a shelter housing some 300 people - families and children - evacuated from the exclusion zone around Fukushima. “These people told us they would like to go home but they are very worried about the high radioactivity levels”, the commissioner said, pleased to note that readings taken by her technical team had shown radioactivity lower than permissible levels. (A.N./transl.rt)