Help For Haiti

"The government has had help come from everywhere in the world - and still they don't do nothing for people. They don't do nothing for us", according to a Haitian who didn't mind speaking simple truth. The UN food program is handing out food boxes to starving Haitians. But their provisions are so meagre, so inadequate, that UN aid workers, alarmed by the presence of more starving Haitians than they can accommodate, simply resort to restocking the provisions back on their trucks and leaving the starving masses behind.

The UN has claimed to have fed 50,000 Haitians, when millions are without food and water. And having fed tens of thousands once is hardly anything to celebrate, since those people are in need of ongoing nutrition. The country's own agricultural practises have been inadequate to produce sufficient food to feed itself. Not entirely their fault, since North American agricultural products, well subsidized by the U.S. and Canada to benefit their own, dump their produce in Haiti, undercutting native producers.

Colonialism is a thing of the past, and just as well, since it isn't a nice thing at all to impose your presumed needs and entitlements upon the backs of the impoverished and the helpless. So the many special textile-goods-producing factories set up in Haiti in a bland attempt to produce more paying jobs for Haitians produced workers paid a pittance, insufficient as a living wage, doing nothing to alleviate poverty. Their nicely-produced tee-shirts went abroad, selling well and profiting investors.

Yesterday an international donors conference was convened in Montreal, where foreign ministers and other governmental executives from the developed world showed up to pledge support for the miserable country and its needs-abandoned people. "If Canada and America want to do something for Haiti, don't give the money to the government because they are going to take it and steal it", said one Haitian.

"Come and give us the houses. Otherwise people will still be on the streets. The mass population won't have the chance to take part in these new villages. The government will choose their friends to put in it. Preval has done zero for us, nothing. The duty of the government is that, whenever something bad happens in a country, they are supposed to be responsible for what happened. But this government doesn't care about what happened".

Haitian President Rene Preval begs to differ from the opinion of this Haitian ingrate. "The presidential palace has fallen. The parliament has fallen. The palace of justice has fallen. Most government buildings have been destroyed with all their records. Yet we are making progress, and the people know it", he said defying popular opinion. In his defence, his wife points out "he's constantly in meetings" with the U.S. military and the UN, helping to guide relief efforts.

And at the Montreal meeting there was general agreement among donor countries that the task ahead is an onerous one but a necessary one; to pull together to bring the country out of its crisis. "It is a shared task, but it must be led by Haitians", said Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. They're in charge, it's their country. Pity they found it impossible to discharge their duties adequately even before the devastation of the earthquake.

Representatives of 14 countries forming an alliance, "friends of Haiti", assembled at that ministerial preparatory conference. To plan ongoing rescue and recovery and longer-term reconstruction. Not that great sums of countries' treasuries haven't prior to this been bestowed upon this poor country. And have, in the final analysis produced little of value for Haitians, 80% of whom live below the poverty line.

Want to help Haiti? Stop propping up useless governments. Insist on accountability for funds transferred to the government. Pledge to assist the country to return to a robust agronomy base; keep foreign-grown-subsidized produce out of the country. Make adequate investments to produce decent, well-paying industrial jobs for the vast demographic of the under- and unemployed. Help build schools to tutor adults in literacy as well as children.

Help the country re-forest itself, and teach rural dwellers other methods of energy-production for heating and cooking. Drop the imposition of quotas and duties on Haitian-produced imports. Help urban dwellers who are jobless to return to the rural areas and resume traditional farming.