Oxfam chief tells Ballymena Times how local 'Haiti' cash is being used

He reveals in his article, given exclusively in Ballymena to this newspaper, that Oxfam’s top priority at present is “to keep the survivors alive and well”. He says...

“The amount of rubble is difficult to comprehend. It is everywhere, not just the collapsed buildings but it’s on the sides of the roads, filling lanes, piled up everywhere you look.

To put that in context it is estimated that it would take eight million journeys by pick-up to remove all the rubble in this city – and most of it is being removed by hand.

There are plenty of signs of life in the city but there is no real sign of regeneration. Right now Oxfam’s top priority is to keep the survivors alive and well as we move towards the prospect of planning the rebuilding of Haiti.

Estimates of the number of homeless range from 1 million to 1.7 million; accurate figures are hard to establish because 15 out of 17 government departments were physically destroyed in the quake and one in every three of the country’s civil servants died. Estimates and accurate figures don’t really come into it when you arrive at the camps. You just understand the cold hard fact that these camps are where hundreds of thousands of people now live. One of the ways Oxfam uses its money is to pay people living in the camps to help in their day-to-day operation, it gives people in the camps a wage and something to do as well as helping us to minimise the possibility of the outbreak of disease in the camps.

Life in the camps does continue, but it is not an acceptable way for people to live. There is a colour code for buildings in the city: red means danger, orange means unsafe and green means safe.

Even for buildings marked green not many people have moved back home, too afraid of the unknown and the memory of what happened.

They are recovering from the initial shock of this terrifying and destructive earthquake, but the lives of the people of Haiti are today permeated with a lingering fear in everyone that it could happen again and the trauma of what they have experienced will live in their memories forever.

Oxfam has a very strong presence in Haiti as we have been operating there for over 30 years and despite the terrible consequences of the earthquake for our staff (2 were tragically killed and most others have suffered in some way) we were in a position to mobilise immediately after the quake and build up our response dramatically in the following days and weeks.

Globally Oxfam is a recognised leader in the area of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and we are building towards providing WASH facilities to 600,000 people – that’s 100,000 more people than every man, woman and child in all of Connacht.

There is no doubt that the efforts of the aid agencies in Haiti have saved thousands of lives already and that Oxfam’s continued presence will save many more.

All the hustle and bustle, all the activity in the huge camps in and around Port-au-Prince, is all set against the backdrop of uncertainty about what will happen next. The government is not telling them.

As time passes and we move toward the critical planning stage for the process of re-building we need the people of Haiti and the government of Haiti to take charge of the situation.

There is no such thing as a totally natural disaster. There were a host of human factors that contributed to what happened in Haiti: poor government, poor quality of buildings, poor planning and regulation.

On the 27th of May the board of the IMF formally agreed to cancel Haiti’s debt and this is good news. Oxfam lobbied hard for this and we were delighted to hear it.

The international community is playing its part and it must continue to do so; however, the next step is up to the people of Haiti and their leaders. At the moment the government in Haiti is providing little leadership or communication with the people of Haiti.

There is no sense that there is a vision for the future and the people need so badly to hear that.

Out of this adversity comes the opportunity for Haiti to rebuild, not as it was but as the country that the people of Haiti deserve.

Oxfam has operated in Haiti for 32 years and we will stay in Haiti throughout the rebuilding process.

It is vital for the international community to remember Haiti in the years to come and continue offering advice and support to the people of Haiti as they undertake the massive task of rebuilding a nation”.