Photo/Illutration A woman residing in Nishimeya, Aomori Prefecture, receives 100,000 yen in cash hours after the supplementary budget passed the Diet on April 30. (Yoshinori Hayashi)

The centerpiece of the 25.691 trillion yen ($240 billion) supplementary budget that passed the Diet on April 30 is an emergency package to tide over every household during the coronavirus pandemic.

A lump sum payment of 100,000 yen will be made to every man, woman and child, as well as foreign residents.

Half of the budget, 12.880 trillion yen, will be used for that purpose.

In addition, 2.318 trillion yen was allotted for a payment program for small business operators whose sales have decreased by at least half due to closures or shorter business hours caused by the health crisis.

Some residents of small rural villages received the 100,000 yen within hours after the supplementary budget passed the Diet, but those living in large urban areas will likely have to wait, perhaps for up to a month, before seeing the money.

The village government of Nishimeya in northern Aomori Prefecture ensured that cash payments were personally distributed on April 30 to residents who had submitted applications beforehand.

Given that the community of 1,300 or so souls has many senior citizens who faced difficulties going to the village government office to fill out the applications and pick up the payments, local officials said the decision was made to deliver the cash to the residents.

The town of Higashikawa in central Hokkaido, the northernmost main island, provided “loans” on April 30 to about 60 residents who faced difficulties after losing their livelihoods or a drop in income due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Local financial institutions transferred 100,000 yen in interest-free loans to the residents who submitted applications. The town government will repay those institutions from the amount included in the central government program.

But those municipalities could afford to quickly distribute the cash payments because of their smaller populations.

That is not the case for Setagaya Ward in Tokyo which has the largest population of any ward in the capital. With about 920,000 residents, the ward government simply did not have the funds to distribute the cash payment beforehand because that would have meant coming up with about 92 billion yen, not including the expenses for doing the paperwork.

Staff at the Setagaya Ward government office were inundated with phone calls from residents wanting to know when the cash payments would be distributed.

They could only respond that the date was still undecided.

The ward government has still not finalized contracts with the businesses that will be commissioned to print the application forms and deliver them to residents.

The Adachi Ward government, also in Tokyo, posted a notice on its website informing its 690,000 or so residents that the cash payments would be distributed from late June at the earliest.

A man in his 60s who operates a flower shop in Adachi Ward said that was simply too late. While he has kept the premises open, sales have fallen sharply and he has to pay out about 100,000 yen a month for rent and utilities.

“I hope they make the payments as quickly as possible because there should not be differences depending on the local government,” the man said.

The Ichikawa city government in Chiba Prefecture began accepting applications for the cash payments from April 27 and had received about 3,000 applications by April 30. A new section made up of 11 government workers was established to handle the cash payments, but the official in charge said other sections would have to help out because of the increased workload.

The Shinagawa Ward government in Tokyo is seeking to distribute the cash payments from late May, a task that entails processing applications for about 230,000 households.

An official in charge said staff were working around the clock in three shifts to handle the paperwork, but admitted that processing 20,000 forms a week was likely the maximum limit.

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