Japan probes widening building safety scandal

TOKYO - Japanese officials and politicians have stepped up investigations into a construction scandal that has struck fear into home owners in the earthquake-prone country after an architect was caught faking data to cut costs.

The scandal, which broke this month when the architect was found to have knowingly designed buildings that would not withstand even a moderate earthquake, has spread to dozens of buildings - mostly apartments and hotels - in at least eight prefectures including Tokyo, according to media surveys.

The reports have outraged the public in a land that accounts for about 20 per cent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater and where memories are vivid of the magnitude 7.3 tremor that killed more than 6,400 in the western city of Kobe in 1995.

Many residents of affected buildings have moved out, others have been ordered to leave, and several small hotels have closed.

With the search for culprits turning toward developers, private certification firms and regulators, the government said it would consider some form of public support for those forced to from their homes.

"We have to ensure the safety of the residents....So we will have to consider the idea of public assistance," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe told a regular news conference.

"The people living in these places are passing very uneasy days. So I am thinking that we cannot take much time."

The scandal, experts said, has its roots in the race to cut costs as well as in lax official oversight of the private sector.

"The cause is obvious. It's cost-cutting. In this very severe economic environment, builders are under huge pressure to reduce costs. If they can't, they can't survive," said Tsunao Imamura, a professor of public administration at Chuo University.

He added: "The issue of what sort of checks the government carried out will soon emerge. This is not just a private sector issue. The scandal will spread."

Lawmakers, keen to show they were taking the scandal seriously, began grilling officials and executives from developers and a private firm that certifies building safety data in a parliamentary committee.

"People are worried that this is just the tip of the iceberg," said opposition Democratic Party lawmaker Akira Nakatsuma.

The executives have repeatedly denied wilful wrongdoing.

The architect, Hidetsugu Aneha, however, did not attend, and media reported he had said he was "too scared to go out".

The construction ministry - already under fire from media for lax supervision of the industry - now plans to set up a task-force to conduct on-site inspections of 48 private firms entrusted by the central government with certifying building data. Local authorities will investigate another 57 firms.

That decision follows an initial investigation that showed 18 state-licensed inspection firms had failed to carry out proper screening procedures, the ministry said in a statement.

Some analysts saw similarities in the building scandal to past scandals involving the safety of such public necessities as food and transport.

"You can trace this back to reported malfeasance across sectors," said Richard Jerram, chief economist at Macquarie Securities. "It's a producer-based economy that is not protecting the consumer. That seems to be the conclusion."

- REUTERS