HAITI QUAKE POPULATION DROPS BELOW 400,000
(Jamaica Observer) -
PORT-AU-PRINCE — An international aid group says the number of Haitians still displaced by the powerful earthquake two years ago has dropped below 400,000 for the first time.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says there are now 390,276 people living in the precarious settlements of makeshift homes erected following the 2010 disaster.
This figure is down from a high of some 1.5 million people who were staying in the camps six months after the quake. It's also a drop of seven per cent from April.
The camp population has fallen through a combination of forced removals, rent subsidies and voluntary departures but it is not clear where the bulk of the people have gone or if their living arrangements are better than the camp conditions.
The figures were released Tuesday following a three-day visit by IOM Director General William Lacy Swing, who is a former US ambassador to Haiti.
A government relocation effort with IOM gave $500 rental subsidies for a year but the project targeted only five per cent of the camp population.
"As for the rest we don't know," said IOM spokesman Leonard Doyle. "A lot of these people we know have pitched tents on the side of the mountains."
Even before the quake, many people in the crowded capital of Port-au-Prince built ramshackle homes on the hillsides due to a lack of affordable housing for the poor majority.
The housing issue remains hot. On Monday, more than a 1,000 protesters blasted a reported government plan to evict renters from their shanty homes to reforest the hillsides.
The IOM figures were released following a three-day visit by IOM Director General William Lacy Swing, who is a former US ambassador to Haiti.
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