March 12, 2010
A new AP article describes the lack of progress on shelter on the two-month anniversary of the quake, as aid groups that say they’re ready to provide housing but haven’t been told where they can build yet, the Haitian government “has yet to relocate a single person”, and hundreds marched demanding something be done:
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Trash and sewage are piling up at the squalid tent camps that hundreds of thousands have called home since Haiti’s devastating earthquake — and with torrential rains expected any day, authorities are not even close to providing the shelters they promised.
Two months since the Jan. 12 quake, the government has yet to relocate a single person, despite a pledge that people would be moving into resettlement areas by early February.
Aid groups say they’re ready to build but don’t have the land. Government officials insist they are making progress on finding sites in closed-door negotiations with private landowners.
But time is running out for 600,000 people living under tarps, tents or simply bed sheets as the rainy season has the makings of a second major crisis. Heavy rains typically start around April 1 and there already have been deadly floods to the west of the earthquake zone.
“It really is desperate,” said Alex Wynter, a spokesman in Haiti for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. “It’s got the makings of a major disaster.”
Read the full article here.
