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Give me shelter: Haiti's homeless ask for tents
(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-01-26 17:09
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 Survivors of Haiti's earthquake stand as they sell their products in Port-au-Prince January 25, 2010. Haiti needs at least five to 10 years of reconstruction help after its people were "bloodied, martyred and ruined" by the devastating earthquake this month, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said on Monday.[Agencies]  |
Helen Clark, administrator of the UN Development Program, said providing shelter is a pressing priority that requires innovative solutions.
"China, for example, set up 400,000 semi-permanent houses after the Sichuan earthquake," she said in a statement. "Similar initiatives will need to be considered and supported for Haiti."
On the soccer field in the Cazo neighborhood, the tents are marked "Qatar Aid," a gift from the Gulf state, but some Haitian quake survivors have personalized theirs — one flies a Haitian flag, another has a Jamaican flag with a picture of Bob Marley.
"This was miserable," said Islamic Relief Worldwide's Moustafa Osman, from Birmingham, England, pointing to the few remaining homemade shelters at the site. "People were living like this everywhere."
Osman's own supply of 1,000 tents has yet to make its way to Haiti, stuck somewhere en route or possibly even waiting in containers that have arrived at Port-au-Prince airport but have yet to be unpacked.
He persuaded a Qatari search and rescue team that was leaving Haiti to donate their 82 tents. He desperately needs at least 16 more for the soccer field settlement, which houses 500 people. Latrines and showers are also yet to arrive.
Osman doesn't speak the local Creole language, so he went to a mosque and hired two Haitians to translate for him. He said he made clear to them that "we are not here for the Muslims, we are here for all the people."
He then negotiated with the St. Claire Roman Catholic Church for permission to use the field on their land for his camp and cleared it with Haiti's government. Fights broke out Sunday when workers were distributing tents, with families trying to get the shelters and others competing for space.
Osman confiscated a machete and temporarily evacuated his staff from the camp.
In Montreal on Monday, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and officials of more than two dozen donor nations and international organizations met to assess the progress of the relief effort.
The Haitian government asked the international community to provide $3 billion for Haiti's reconstruction, the tourism minister said. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told the conference his impoverished nation lost 60 percent of its gross domestic product in the quake.
US officials say the rescue phase of the operation is over and the focus has shifted to relief and recovery.
"Outside of the food area, the two prime worries are: one, medical services or medical equipment, and, two, shelter," said Lewis Lucke, US special coordinator for relief and reconstruction.
He said officials are seeing so many people unable to return to their homes that they are scrambling to get them plastic sheeting and other shelter. "This is one of our main priorities."
The US government is donating its old and unused embassy building in downtown Port-au-Prince to Haiti's government, which will use it as a temporary legislature, according to Delatour, the tourism minister.
The building, next door to the partially collapsed Parliament building, will be rented at a nominal $1 a year, Delatour said. One senator was killed in the collapse and another was trapped for days, but rescued.
There are 54 confirmed American dead in Haiti, and US officials were seeking to confirm 36 other possible deaths, State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said Monday.
