Japan's government will start offering training for would-be volunteers at disaster evacuation centers from the fiscal year beginning in April next year to improve the quality of such places and cut down on the mortality rate of those taking shelter.
With the program, which will start on a trial basis, the government is hoping to compile a database of those who have completed the training so they can be dispatched to areas that have been hit by disasters and help maintain the hygiene and living conditions at evacuation centers, officials said.
While municipalities are responsible for setting up shelters at school gymnasiums, among other places, they are often short of staff, and officials are forced to respond to many issues in the aftermath of a disaster.
Reducing the number of deaths caused by illness or stress linked to disasters has been a pressing issue in Japan, where earthquakes and typhoons hit regularly.
The Cabinet Office has been studying the specifics of the training with experts ahead of the expected launch of the project next fiscal year in some of the country's 47 prefectures.
Volunteers who work at evacuation centers must have certain knowledge and skills, including a good grasp on the physical condition of the elderly and securing the privacy of those sheltering.
Through the project, the government seeks to develop three categories of volunteers -- leader, adviser and coordinator.
A leader will be on duty at an evacuation center at all times, while an adviser will offer counseling at several centers. A coordinator will be tasked with working with local government and welfare officials, as well as medical experts, to solve problems.
"We would like to increase the number of people around the country who have know-how on assisting," said an official in charge of the program at the Cabinet Office.
As of March, 3,774 people have died from disaster-related causes, such as illness triggered by evacuation, since the massive earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster in northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011.
A series of large earthquakes that rocked the southwestern prefecture of Kumamoto in 2016 resulted in 221 disaster-related deaths or about 80 percent of the lost lives.
