Tokyo, March 14 (Jiji Press)—A Japanese company used a Vietnamese trainee in work to decontaminate areas tainted with radioactive materials released by the March 2011 nuclear disaster without explanations about possible health hazards, it was learned Wednesday.

The practice was unveiled at a press conference by a labor union supporting the 24-year-old man, who came to Japan under the country’s Technical Intern Training Program for foreigners.

According to the union, the man arrived in Japan in September 2015 as a trainee in construction machinery, building demolition and civil engineering and was employed by a construction company in Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, northeastern Japan, in October that year.

Between that month and March 2016, he took part in work in Kōriyama, Fukushima Prefecture, also northeastern Japan, to replace soil contaminated with radioactive substances from Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s meltdown-hit Fukushima No. 1 power plant.

But his contract with the company had no mention of decontamination work. The company gave him no explanation about details of his work or the hazards of exposure to radiation, according to the man.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]