Church in the World

Haiti’s reconstruction plan ‘flawed’

The reconstruction plan proposed by the Government following the devastating 12 January earthquake fails to address the fundamental problems in Haitian society, a senior Jesuit in the country has said.

Fr François Kawas, the head of Cedar, a partner of the British Catholic charities Cafod and Progressio, also criticised the Haitian Government for the way it had, since March, blocked food distribution to the hundreds of thousands of displaced people living in camps around the country, and warned that violence could follow as a result. “We do not agree with the construction plan. We think the main problems of society are not developed in it,” he told The Tablet this week.

The plan talks of rebuilding what was destroyed, but Fr Kawas said infrastructure needs to be decentralised away from the congested and badly damaged capital, Port-au-Prince. Many of the more than 250,000 people who died were killed in the densely packed slum areas.

“We don’t have industries in other cities. We want the Government to create jobs in all departments of the country. It’s not good to have all industries in Port-au-Prince,” Fr Kawas said. Overcrowding in the capital has been worsened as rural Haitians migrate to the capital in search of work.

Fr Kawas leads a think tank that evaluates the impact of the earthquake on Haiti, politically, economically and socially. The Jesuits have also set up a body to observe public policy since the quake and are in the process of setting up a centre for spirituality to support people coming to terms with the catastrophe.

The group is also calling for tighter building regulations and the respect of existing construction laws, neither of which are prioritised in the plan. Gaining permission to build is a slow process and can be avoided through bribery, resulting in cheap homes being built haphazardly across whole hillsides.

In addition, Fr Kawas was critical of the March decision by President René Préval to extend his governing mandate by more than three months beyond the due date for presidential elections of November this year. He complained that the introduction after the quake of an emergency law gave absolute power to the Government to act as it saw fit. Already small-scale unrest takes place daily on the streets of the capital. “There is a risk of riots. We ask the Government to explain what it wants to do with the displaced population. People are dying in camps from disease; they are angry and hungry,” Fr Kawas said.

But the impact of the many NGOs operating in Haiti now was being hindered by poor co-ordination and inefficiency, resulting in some camp-dwellers losing faith in them, Fr Kawas said. He went on: “We see there is no long-term plan, no coordination with the Government, no regional plan. Everybody does what he wants.”

The Jesuit think tank also called for the revival of the rural economy. Over the last few decades the Caribbean nation has increasingly relied on imports including subsidised rice from the US, fish from Scandinavia and eggs from the neighbouring Dominican Republic.