ARTICLE - U.S. - DECENTRALIZED DEVELOPMENT

U.S. LOOKING FORWARD TO DECENTRALIZED DEVELOPMENT IN HAITI
(AHN) - By Tejinder Singh

The United States on Friday reiterated its continued support to Haitian people as the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake approaches in the coming days.

(Washington) - The United States on Friday reiterated its continued support to Haitian people as the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake approaches in the coming days.

Addressing journalists at a special briefing at the State Department, Rajiv Shah, USAID Administrator joined by Cheryl Mills, Counselor to Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State elaborated on the efforts producing results in Haiti.

Replying to a question from AHN, about the complaints from the ground about the concentration of relief and reconstruction efforts in and around Port-au-Prince, Mills noted that the U.S. has designated, “North as one of the development quarters that we are focused on making significant investments in.”

Citing two MoUs signed and other negotiations, “with foreign investors on how we could go about attracting them to an industrial park,” Mills said, “We would be prepared to also provide the kind of electrification that would be necessary, not only in support of such an activity but also in support of creating greater access.”

Highlighting the agriculture potential of the North, Mills said, “There’s also of the agriculture that is in the north that we are interested in helping to support, and in particular, there are export crops up there in both mangos and cacao that we think is pretty impactful for the Haitian economy.”

Mills felt that the planning phase is casting doubts, saying, “I do think it takes a while to do all of those things, and I think that’s the hard part. When you’re sitting and planning, it looks like nothing is going on.”

Administrator Shah, on his part, shared that areas, “like agriculture, housing, and the provision of shelter,” are getting due attention, arguing that, “Being able to provide 11,000 transitional shelters and to review 400,000 damaged units to identify which ones can be reconstructed, and building a small-scale Haitian reconstruction industry that can use improved rebar and cement to reconstruct those back to earthquake standard, will set the stage for a much more rapid and a much more effective shelter strategy through the coming years.”

Earlier, Shah recounted the magnitude of devastation, noting the dimension of “the humanitarian challenge with several hundred thousand people literally losing their lives and with 27 of 28 Haitian Government ministries being destroyed in the physical earthquake.”

“We’ll recall that that effectively represented the largest humanitarian effort ever mounted with the food distribution that, at its peak, reached 3.5 million people with efforts to get shelter material to 1.5 million people with nearly 2 million metric tons of rubble removed, a pace that was faster than what we saw in the first two-and-a-half years after the Aceh tragedy in Indonesia, noted Administrator Shah.