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Haitian representatives are meeting with potential donors from around the world at the UN in New York today. They’re presenting a report tallying the physical toll of the January 12 earthquake, as well as a plan for rebuilding. An essential component of that plan involves building infrastructure and creating jobs in Haiti, but outside of Port-au-Prince. Many hope that a popular dream of decentralization will finally be realized. The World’s Amy Bracken has more.
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MARCO WERMAN: Haiti appealed to international donors at the United Nations today to help rebuild the country after the January earthquake. It’s seeking up to four billion dollars. Haitian leaders came armed with a reconstruction plan. I key piece of that plan involves building infrastructure and creating jobs outside of the capital, Port au Prince. The World’s Amy Bracken reports.
AMY BRACKEN: In the days following the January 12th earthquake, hundreds of thousands of survivors fled Port au Prince. They boarded buses weighed down with mattresses and suitcases to stay with friends or family or in shelters all over the country. It was reverse migration. For decades Haitians have been fleeing in the other direction, escaping the hardship of the countryside in search of opportunity in Port au Prince. When the earthquake hit, the capital was congested and bursting at the seams. Now many are calling for the reverse migration to become permanent. The leafy town of Mirebalais is about an hour outside the capital. Tent camps for the displaced sprang up here after the earthquake. They’re gone now, so remaining survivors are taking refuge in churches, a roadside night club and a professional institute. At the Caprofors Technical School, there’s free shelter, food and water for earthquake refugees, and something else. Here young men are studying electrical engineering. And in another room some women wait for a nursing class to begin. The school is offering free eight month courses, including English, Medical Technology, Plumbing, Mechanics and Computers. Funding comes from the Rotary Club of Waukesha, Wisconsin. That’s the home town of Brent Schwaller, who came to Haiti after the earthquake to teach aquaculture and agriculture.
BRENT SCHWALLER: The main thing that we’re trying to do that a lot of the IDP camps aren’t doing, from my impression, what I’ve seen, is we’re trying to give them the opportunity to do something for themselves. With the land that we have they can have a garden. We can give them some animals. We can give them an education so that they can be relocated back into society.
BRACKEN: Organizers say after the 200 students here complete the program, they will try to help them find jobs, preferably in the area. They’re not the only ones trying to create opportunities for people in Mirebalais. Across town at a cyber café a dozen young men and women are reading Creole text messages and translating them into English. They’re working on a humanitarian mapping program. People across Haiti send alerts about urgent needs to an SMS number. The young Haitians send the translations to another group in the U.S. which maps the points of need to provide direction to humanitarian groups. When the project began, the messages were largely alerts about people trapped under rubble or in need of food and water. Supervisor Miange Joseph says these day they’re getting a different request.
INTERPRETER: Now there are a lot of people who need jobs because they lost their jobs. So they let us know what skills they have or what they were doing and we hope to connect them with someone who might hire them.
BRACKEN: This project provides temporary jobs for about 50 people. It’s financed by an organization called 1,000 Jobs Haiti. The group is focused on creating those jobs outside of Port au Prince. Mirebalais Vice Mayor Moise Oxama, says what’s needed is something on a much larger scale.
INTERPRETER: The problems we face in this country today are because of centralization. We need to give people the chance to stay in their home towns and still go to school, have a hospital, have work. Look at Mirebalais, they have about a hundred students who moved to Port au Prince to go to university. They lost their homes and families and now they’re back here in temporary shelter.
BRACKEN: Oxama says Mirebalais is ready for expansion in every way because it has electricity, water and land. All it needs is development and the money to do it. The calls for decentralization are coming from other parts of the country. Pierre Leger runs a factory in the southern town of Les Cayes. He has to truck in fuel from the capital to run his generators.
PIERRE LEGER: The biggest problem of poverty in this country, in this banana republic, is the concentration of wealth and goods in Port au Prince.
BRACKEN: He says the focus on the capital holds back development for the rest of the country.
LEGER: If there is no decentralization, my factory in Les Cayes will not survive. Imagine the roads being cut between Port au Prince and Les Cayes. The factory will be closed. I have no airports in Les Cayes. I have no ports in the south.
BRACKEN: Leger shows me feasibility studies for a sea port and an international airport south of the capital. The studies are 10 years old, but there has been no movement on these projects. Leger blames a corrupt central government for holding them back. Kesner Pharel, a well-known economist and radio personality says it’s more about a culture of inaction.
KESNER PHAREL: We used to say NATO is for Haiti, No Action Talk Only.
BRACKEN: He hopes the aftermath of the earthquake will finally kick both public and private sectors into gear. And, he says, a place to begin is with those displaced from the capital.
PHAREL: Five hundred thousand people, at least, left the region hit by the earthquake. They have been all over the place. In the north, in the south, so you got to keep these people there. But to do so, you have to create jobs and that’s pretty much the big challenges of this country for the next five, ten years.
BRACKEN: The question remains, how committed are Haiti and the rest of the world to meeting that challenge? For The World, I’m Amy Bracken.
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