Speaking of garbage 鈥� which sa国际传媒鈥檚 International Co-operation Minister Julian Fantino was doing when he criticized Haitians for the state of their streets 鈥� Oxfam Quebec鈥檚 director in Haiti, Claude Saint-Pierre, 56, described the situation in the small town east of Quebec City in which he grew up:
鈥淧eople used to put their garbage bags in the trunk of their cars. They鈥檇 drive a short way out of town and throw the bag in the ditch by the side of the road. It has taken 45 years of education and laws and signs to go from throwing garbage out the window to recycling.
鈥淚f you throw a can of Coke out the window today, that will be a very expensive can of Coke.鈥� (Fines for littering in Quebec today can reach several hundred dollars.)
Saturday marked the third anniversary of the earthquake that killed at least 250,000 people in Haiti and left a further 1.5 million homeless. It鈥檚 a milestone that Fantino suggested sa国际传媒 might mark by freezing all future aid projects to the desperately impoverished country.
The 2010 earthquake left the country鈥檚 fragile infrastructure in ruins, its food-supply network and medical services in tatters. But Fantino, according to an interview he gave to La Presse, thinks that three years should be enough time for Haiti to get its act together. Never mind the cholera epidemic that has since killed at least 7,000 people, or the two monster storms, including hurricane Sandy, that hit Haiti this year. To say nothing of a deadly drought that destroyed its crops.
Few people other than Fantino believe that three years was long enough for Haiti to rebuild and its government to turn into a model of efficiency and accountability. Officials with the U.S. State Department and the United Nations Development Program this week urged sa国际传媒 to change its mind, the Canadian Press reported.
鈥淗aiti is not going to become a middle-income country overnight,鈥� Eileen Wickstrom Smith, a senior official in the U.S. State Department鈥檚 Haiti office, told CP.
Jessica Faieta, a deputy director for the UN program鈥檚 Latin American bureau, told the news service: 鈥淚t is not, in our opinion, a time to pull the support from Haiti. On the contrary, it is time to recognize the efforts, to recognize the achievements and to keep supporting Haiti.鈥�
In a telephone interview from Haiti, Saint-Pierre said that no one can be opposed to 鈥渓ooking at what has been done and learning from it, and to question[ing] what has been done with what resources.鈥� But he added that 鈥渁n amazing amount of work has been done since the earthquake.鈥�
鈥淭he debris is not completely cleared, but more debris has been cleared in Haiti in a year than in New York a year after 9/11 at the World Trade Center site. In Haiti, after the earthquake, there were 1.5 million displaced. Three years later, 350,000 are still living in camps. It took Japan 鈥� Japan! 鈥� 10 years to move all the people displaced by the Kobe earthquake in 1995.鈥�
And contrary to what many people would like to believe, money cannot resolve everything quickly, he said. 鈥淎 country does not go in a straight line from emergency to rehabilitation and reconstruction to long-term development. At the moment in Haiti, we are still in a humanitarian situation. The food supply is very fragile.鈥� Lack of proper environmental and agricultural policy has led to only two per cent of Haiti鈥檚 land mass being under forest cover, he added.
Progress in Haiti, the Northern Hemisphere鈥檚 poorest nation, has to be measured against what it was before the 2010 earthquake struck, Saint-Pierre said. 鈥淎fter the earthquake we were not starting from zero; we were starting from a minus position.鈥� To say, as Fantino did, that little has been done, 鈥渋s very unfair,鈥� he said.
Under the crush of humanitarian work 鈥� trucking clean water to camps, building latrines to stave off further cholera outbreaks, and constructing houses 鈥� there has been little opportunity to build the infrastructure to deal with garbage collection.
Former Quebec politician David Payne, who dug out bodies from Haiti鈥檚 parliament building in the days after the earthquake and whose efforts helped lead to the parliament鈥檚 regrouping within four days of the disaster, said he finds Fantino鈥檚 remarks 鈥減rimitive and pathetic鈥� for a minister of the Canadian government: 鈥淪ome officials come in as tourists, have a quick look and they鈥檙e gone. It鈥檚 not helpful.鈥�
