TOKYO: Some 23,700 units of emergency housing have been secured for people whose homes were damaged by the powerful earthquake that hit central Japan on Jan. 1, Prime Minister KISHIDA Fumio said Friday.

At a meeting of the government’s disaster response headquarters, Kishida instructed relevant ministers to take prompt action so that people who want to move into emergency housing can do so as soon as possible.

He also called for promoting the use of secondary evacuation places, such as hotels, to which evacuees in makeshift shelters can move.

Some 300 units of public housing and 5,500 units of private rental housing have been secured in Ishikawa Prefecture, hit hard by the 7.6-magnitude Noto Peninsula quake.

In the nearby prefectures of Toyama, Fukui and Niigata, some 900 units of public housing and 17,000 units of private rental housing are available.

Kishida also announced the start on Friday of the construction of temporary housing for evacuees in the Ishikawa cities of Wajima and Suzu. The construction of such housing will begin in the Ishikawa towns of Anamizu and Noto next week.

At a press conference, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said that the government has secured accommodations for a total of 13,000 people as secondary evacuation places in seven prefectures in the Hokuriku central and neighboring regions and for an additional 12,000 people in the country’s three major metropolitan areas of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya.

JIJI Press