Foreign labourers with sufficient Japanese language skills will for the first time be enlisted to decommission the reactors at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant under new visa rules, the station’s operator said Thursday. The step comes after Japan this month launched new visa statuses to attract more foreign workers and ease the impact of the nation’s shrinking workforce and population. Operator TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power) has previously used highly skilled foreign engineers in Fukushima, but generally refrained from accepting foreign labourers in work crews there — in part because the jobs requires strong command of the Japanese language to understand technical instructions. But the government’s new visas are available to foreigners with strong Japanese language skills in 14 sectors suffering critical labour shortages such as construction, farming and elderly care.
Daily Mail 18th April 2019 read more »
