Hungry Haitians Still Wait For Aid After 2 Weeks

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Desperate Haitians Wednesday still faced a battle for survival more than two weeks after a deadly quake, as aid trickled in and fears grew that child traffickers could exploit the tragedy.

Pillagers ran rife in the ruins of the capital while there was no sign of the tent camps promised by the government for the hundreds of thousands of homeless people fleeing grim conditions in Port-au-Prince.

Just four blocks from the destroyed presidential palace as crowds queued under a blazing sun, Immacula Cadet said she was hungry, but was afraid of being hurt in the long lines if fighting erupts over the handouts.

“I don’t want to battle in the road to have a little bread,” she told AFP. “We really have problems. We need all that (aid). We need food, we have no water.”

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Up to a million people were left homeless and destitute by the 7.0-magnitude January 12 quake, which destroyed much of the capital city of the impoverished Caribbean nation and left 150,000 dead.

A massive aid effort has swung into place, but many Haitians, left living in makeshift camps dotted around Port-au-Prince, say they have yet to receive vital supplies of food or water.

Haitians are “desperately in need of meals ready to eat” and tents ahead of the rainy season, senior UN humanitarian official Catherine Bragg said at the World Economic Forum at the Swiss mountain resort of Davos.

In the Cite Soleil slum Tuesday, several thousand desperate people converged on a walled police compound for sacks of relief supplies, surging against the steel gates.

Across the city, walls have been scrawled with messages. “We need help. Food, water, medicine,” said one in Spanish and English.

Some 20,000 US troops have been sent in to help distribute food and water with the US saying it had begun to hand out 14 million meals and was aiming to supply half a million people with fresh water within a few days.

Ronald Waldman, coordinator of US health efforts in Haiti, said US medics had carried out “thousands” of amputations and that the figure could reach tens of thousands by the end of the reflief effort.

Canada said its troops had cleared Haiti’s Jacmel airfield of debris in a bid to ease the aid logjam. The main Port-au-Prince airport is under US military control, but aid is still said to be backed up there.

Pillagers armed with small handcarts again swarmed across the rubble Wednesday removing anything salvageable, especially wood and metal to help throw up temporary shacks.

The Haitian government has embarked on program to relocate 500,000 people in villages outside the capital, but the scheme has been greeted with some suspicion by a people scarred by decades of political upheaval.

“I’m not going to Croix des Bouquets or anywhere for that matter,” said Martine Desir, 24, referring to one new community being set up some 15 kilometers (nine miles) outside the capital.

An AFP reporter in Croix des Bouquets Wednesday said the area was a vast, gravel wasteland with just a few people hanging about hoping for work.

“We need jobs, but we are angry. The radio told us (the government) is setting up a camp, but there is nothing here,” said Saint Louis Clevens, 32, as he waited in vain outside the site.

Oxfam has launched a “cash-for-work” scheme to employ people to clean up makeshift camps and improve their living conditions, which will be expanded to nine other sites housing some 80,000 people.

Although the global focus is now on helping the hungry, stunned rescuers Tuesday wrenched a survivor from the rubble after 12 days entombed in the ruins.

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Dehydrated, covered in dust and with a broken leg, the 31-year-old emerged alive from the ruins of a road called the Rue de Miracles after surviving on small amounts of water.

He was not buried by the January 12 quake but two days later, according to the US military who rescued him, probably by an aftershock. His ordeal was the longest of any Haiti quake survivor so far.

The UN warned meanwhile that child traffickers and gangsters could try to exploit the chaos triggered by the quake to step up their criminal activities.

Dermot Carty, deputy director of the UN children’s fund UNICEF, said the chaotic situation in Haiti offered a “conducive environment” for traffickers and smugglers to abduct Haitian children.

The US State Department separately urged prospective parents to be patient when adopting Haitian children after the country put the brakes on airlifts to prevent mistakes and trafficking.