‘‘Although it is not the duty of the central government to decide how to distribute the funds, we would like to devise some sort of guidelines to enable speedy distribution.”-Yoshihiro Katayama, Internal Affairs and Communications Minister

In another example that shows Japan is not prepared for disasters, billions of donated money is sitting around waiting for the national (central), and local governments, to figure out what to do with it.  Which is amazing because they were able to deal with a similar situation after the 1995 earthquake, what’s the problem now?

Local governments are complaining about how the money is going to be issued. Also, government officials say they are waiting for the charities to recommend how the money should be used. Did anyone tell the charities?