The controversial campaign aims to revitalize domestic tourism affected by the virus with offers of discounts and subsidies. The mayor’s firm stance against the allocation turned out to be one of the points that led the government to exclude Tokyo from the program.
Mutsu, with a population of over 56,000, is a provincial city in the northernmost prefecture of the main island of Honshu in Japan. The city’s main industries are fishing and forestry.
It attracts more than 800,000 tourists a year to attractions such as Osorezan Reijo, one of the three holiest sites in Japan. Yaen-Koen is also popular for being home to the world’s northernmost monkeys.
But the number of tourists arriving at the city’s hotels and hostels in May was down about 35% from a year earlier.
Actually, the campaign would give a boost to Mutsu’s tourism industry, but why is the mayor so opposed to it?
“The crusade will certainly inspire others to move from spaces with higher risk of infection to places with less threat. If that happens, what we have endured so far will have been in vain,” Miyashita told a news conference. The government decides, Mutsu has a duty to its own citizens. “
Before the government declared a state of emergency in April, the city began asking citizens to stay in Mutsu as much as possible. The authorities also asked others who now live outside Mutsu to refrain from returning to their places of origin. These efforts have allowed the city to keep COVID-19 cases at 0 so far.
The mayor is deeply concerned about the limited resources of his only medical center. Mutsu Public General Hospital is the only medical center for the approximately 80,000 citizens of Mutsu and surrounding municipalities. If infections occur in the area, the hospital will need to treat all cases. But it only has 4 beds for patients with infectious diseases.
In addition, the hospital only has 10 ventilators and no ECMO machines for others with severe symptoms. ECMO machines pump oxygen into the bloodstream, allowing the patient’s center and lungs to rest while the immune formula works to defeat pathogens.
In addition, the hospital suffers from a chronic shortage of doctors and nurses, forcing patients in some wards to wait up to four hours before they can receive a diagnosis.
If the hospital were to treat coronavirus patients, it would obviously disrupt its operation.
Miyashita obviously understands the importance and necessity of the campaign. In the past, he worked for the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, as part of the campaign. He joined the ministry after graduating from school and spent 11 years as a bureaucrat before that. running for mayor.
But he is transparent about the disruptions of the existing plan to revitalize Japan’s tourism trade.
“As infections continue to spread, the crusade should be limited first to the interior of the prefectures and not to the entire country,” he says. “Every prefecture wants to be sensible when it comes to finding effective tactics to promote tourism. “
Mutsu now plans to launch a crusade to inspire citizens of nearby municipalities to use hotels and hostels in Mutsu.
Like many other places, Mutsu has already taken steps to improve its economy. They come with 300,000 yen, or about $2,800, in invoices for caterers, an 80% asset tax policy for accommodation providers, and a gift certificate for buyers. A budget of about 1. 1 billion yen, or about $10 million, was used to finance those measures, despite the city’s financial difficulties.
With infections resurfacing in Japan since July, it is not easy for the city to implement new economic measures.
“The project of municipal leaders is to protect the lives and health of their citizens,” says Miyashita. “Of course, the economy is directly related to people’s lives. If the economy slows down, I know things can get difficult. But as the virus continues to spread, we deserve to focus on what we can do to protect people. ” people, rather than asking them to weigh the economy against human life.
With limited monetary resources, local governments face the serious challenge of protecting the population from the virus while keeping regional economies afloat.