The Grauniad wrote:Funds to help Japan tsunami victims find work spent in unaffected areas
Tens of billions of yen earmarked for employment schemes were allegedly spent on initiatives located far from tsunami-hit region
More than ¥100bn (£650m) of a special budget set up to help victims of Japan's March 2011 triple disaster find work has been spent on projects that have no connection to the tragedy, including cheese and wine promotions.
Tens of billions of yen earmarked for employment schemes was spent on a range of initiatives located far from the tsunami-hit region, such as counting sea turtles, publishing of a restaurant guide and publicising a mascot for a local prefecture, a Japanese newspaper said.
The evidence of wasteful public spending, uncovered by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, will come as an embarrassment to the government, months after it was revealed that a quarter of the ¥11.7tn the government initially allocated to rebuild the region had been spent on other unrelated projects.
The Asahi found that ¥108.5bn of the 200bn yen employment budget had been spent in 38 prefectures other than the nine that were affected by the March 11 disaster, in which more than 18,000 people died.
...motto...