The non-reconstruction of the State University

Putting the nation in peril

Port-au-Prince, February 22, 2012 – Two years after the earthquake, and despite the proposals written, the consortiums organized and the foreign delegations entertained, the University of the State of Haiti (Université d’Etat d’Haïti or UEH) still has not seen any “reconstruction,” and the proposal for a university campus that would unite all 11 faculties remains a 25-year-old “dream.”

Today, the majority of the 13,000 students at the UEH’s faculties in the capital are jammed into sweltering sheds, struggling to hear the professor who is shouting, hoping to drown out the other professors shouting in the surrounding sheds.

Students in a tent "classroom" at the Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Medecine which is next to the land the State University hopes to use for a campus. Photo: HGW

The fact that the Haitian government and its “friends” have not financed the reconstruction – an a sufficient operating budget – of the oldest and most important institution of higher learning in the country represents more than a “peril” to Haiti’s future. These choices – or at least, these omissions – offer perfect examples of the global orientation of the “reconstruction” which is centered on the needs of the national and international private sector, and which favors “answers” to urgent problems that are often palliative “quick-fixes.” Finally, these omissions represent contempt for the public interests of the entire nation.

The dream of a campus – The farce of the IHRC

The disaster of January 12, 2010, destroyed nine of the 11 UEH faculties in the capital. Three hundred and eighty students, and more than 50 professors and administrative staff of UEH disappeared, according to the university and to a study by the Inter-university Institute for Research and Development (INURED), released in March, 2010. (According to the same study, at least 2,000 students and 130 professors in all of the institutions of higher learning died in the catastrophe.)

A building at the former Faculty of Medecine and Pharmacy. Photo: INURED

The Faculty of Applied Linguistics, where 350 students and 18 professors
and staff died. Source and photo: INURED

Nevertheless, this tragedy offered an opportunity to state university authorities, who are themselves charged with supervising all institutions of higher learning in the country. The members of the Council of the Rectorate saw their chance to make a dream become reality. Twenty-five years ago, in 1987, delegates at the first conference of the National Federation of Haitian Students (FENEH in French) listed a campus as one of their post-dictatorship goals and demands.

“We always wanted a university campus, we really struggled for that,” remembered Rose Anne Auguste in an interview with Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) in July, 2011. Once a FENEH leader, today she is a nurse and community activist.

Over one year ago, the Rectorate submitted a proposal to the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), the institution charged with approving and coordinating all reconstruction projects.

“Right in its first extraordinary meeting, on February 5, 2010, the University Council decided to face the reconstruction problem… and we voted a resolution asking the Executive Council to take all measures deemed necessary to assure all the University faculties could be rehoused together,” according to the project, which HGW obtained.

“When considered as part of the challenge of reconstruction and of the re-founding of this nation, this project can be seen as a crucial asset of primary importance which will assure a better tomorrow for our population,” the same document continues.

The Rectorate proposed a provisional student and preliminary budget of US$200 million for the construction of the main campus with classroom buildings, libraries, laboratories, restaurants, and university residents to lodge 15,000 students and 1,000 professors on part of the old Habitation Damien land in Croix-des-Bouquets, north of Port-au-Prince.

Area on the northern edge of the capital, reserved for the campus. Credit: UEH proposal

“It’s an old dream,” said Fritz Deshommes, Vice Rector for Research, during an interview with HGW.

“It’s really an aberration… despite the importance of UEH in the higher education system in Haiti, this prestigious institution has never had a campus,” he added.

Following the submission of the project in February, 2011, for months, the IHRC “didn’t respond. We gave a copy to each member of the council… the administrative director promised to call us, but that promise was empty. And they never discussed the proposal,” Deshommes deplored.

Auguste was aware of the project.

Founder of the Association for the Promotion of Integral Family Health (APROSIFA in French), August was a member of the IHRC, representing (without the right to vote) the Haitian “NGOs.”

“The project was never discussed at any IHRC assembly, but every member knew about it. I tried to pressure the administrative council to get the project considered and discussed,” she told HGW.

“According to the project director, there were some technical weaknesses,” she added.

Maybe.

But the IHRC had its own weaknesses, according to a study by the US-based Government Accountability Office or GAO published in May, 2011.

After a year of existence, many projects had been approved but not financed; two out of five departments had no director, and 22 of 34 key posts remained vacant, the GAO noted.

In short, the IHRC was not “yet fully operational… According to U.S. and NGO officials, staffing shortages affected the project review process—a process to determine whether project proposals should be approved for implementation—and communications with stakeholders, such as the Board of Directors,” according to the GAO.

But the IHRC did acknowledge getting the project.

Contacted via email on October 17, 2011 by HGW, ICHR Director of Projects at the time, Aurélie Baoukobza, promised that the campus proposal was under consideration.

“The proposal is currently following the reviewing circuit [sic] and the discussions relative to its approval have not yet been shared,” she wrote.

“Therefore, I cannot discuss this project with the media. The decision of the IHRC and the Government are supposed to be delivered to the submitting parties [the Rectorate] by the end of the week. Only after that official email can I speak about the project,” she promised.

Four days later, on October 21, the mandate of the IHRC expired.

Silence.

Many years of struggle 

Deshommes was not surprised at the silence, or at the lack of a campus.

“The reason that the university campus has never built is political. Because, if all the students were permanently together in one place, they would have the necessary material conditions to better organize themselves and make their demands heard. Then, they would be able to turn everything upside down. The political authorities understood the importance of this. A single campus is not in their interests,” he said.

As noted above, and not surprisingly, the fight for a campus didn’t start only after the earthquake. As Auguste said, it was born after 1986, the date of the end of the dictatorship of François and Jean-Claude Duvalier.

Ever since a 1960 strike of students at the University of Haiti, François Duvalier established his control over the various faculties. He issued decree on December 16, 1960, creating the “University of the State” in the place of the University of Haiti, whose fascist character was apparently in the various lines of decree. Among other things, it said “considering the necessity to organize the University on new foundations in order to prevent it from transforming into a bastion where subversive ideas would develop…”

Article 9 was even clearer. It noted that any student wanting to enroll in the university had to get a police paper certifying that he or she did not belong to any communist group or any association under suspicion by the State.

These students – from the Gonaives Law School of the UEH, which invited ex-dictator Jean-Caude Duvalier to address their graduation recently – are either terribly uneducated about their own history, or they don't share the democratic spirit of their predecessors, or both. Photo: Le Nouvelliste

After February 7, 1986 – the departure of Jean-Claude Duvalier in a US-government chartered airplane – one of the most dominant slogans was “Haiti is free!”

The political uprising that spread throughout the country also extended to the university system. As in other sectors of Haitian national life, professors and students at the university demanded a number of reforms as well as the construction of a campus that would gather together all the faculties sprinkled throughout the capital.

Since then, there has been some progress – the name was changed to UEH, there has been some democratization, the level of teaching has been improved – but lack of financing has paralyzed the institution. The budgets from the last few years show that UEH has never received more than 1 to 1.3 percent of the state budget.

Even worse, the government’s Action Plan for Renewal and Development (PADRN in French), proposed by the René Préval team, asked for only US$60 million for “professional and higher education” as part of its request for $3.864 billion sought for reconstruction – only 1.5 percent of the total.

The new Michel Martelly government showed signs it would increase UEH’s budget but – according to a recent report by AlterPresse, a member of the Haiti Grassroots Watch partnership – the most recent budget dedicates only 1.5 percent to UEH. Currently, several dozen part-time professors are owed salaries for the current and previous semester.

“This budget shows the contempt that our elected officials have for the country’s principal public institution of higher education, as well as their evident desire to weaken it and perhaps even do away with it altogether,” Professor Jean Vernet Henry, Rector of UEH, told AlterPresse in the January 27 article.

“A race between education and catastrophe”

The low funding represents much more than contempt. It represents a danger, a “peril,” according to experts.

A 2000 study funded by the World Bank – Peril and Promise: Higher Education in Developing Countries – sounded the alarm about the lack of investment in public higher education ten years ago.

Since the 1980s, many national governments and international donors have assigned higher education a relatively low priority. Narrow—and, in our view, misleading—economic analysis has contributed to the view that public investment in universities and colleges brings meager returns compared to investment in primary and secondary schools…

As a result, higher education systems in developing countries are under great strain. They are chronically underfunded, but face escalating demand—approximately half of today’s higher education students live in the developing world.

The study looked at enrollment and investment figures in countries around the world (figures from 1995). Here are some extracts, compared with Haitian figures calculated by Haiti Grassroots Watch:

	Haiti*	Dominican Republic	Nicaragua	Latin America and Caribbean	Sub-Saharan Africa
Higher education enrollment (percentage of university-age population)	1%	22%	12%	18%	3%
Percentage of state budget dedicated to education	14%	13.2%	N/A	18.1%	15.2%
Percentage of that amount going to higher education	8.25%	9%	N/A	19.5%	16.7%

* Note – The Haiti budget figures are taken from the average between the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 fiscal year actual expenses.

Not surprisingly, in terms of enrollment, Haiti is far behind its neighbors, and in terms of investments, Haiti is at the bottom of the list. Even the Dominican Republic, well-known for its failure to invest in higher education, is ahead of Haiti.

The authors of the study – a committee of academics and former ministers headed by the ex-Dean of Harvard University and the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town – cited a warning from H.G. Wells:

The chance is simply too great to miss. As H.G. Wells said in The Outline of History,
“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”

The “friends of Haiti” support the private sector

At the very moment the proposal for the State University of Haiti campus was locked in a drawer, the Dominican Republic government built a university campus in the north of the country – the King Henry Christophe University. Built in only 18 months, the campus cost US$50 million.

And the universities and government of the “friends of Haiti” countries?

Despite a number of meetings and conferences held abroad and at seaside hotels and at the most expensive conference centers in the country, despite the promises of a number of US universities, through at least two consortia, and despite the promises at the Regional Conference of Rectors and Presidents of the Francophone University Agency (AUF in French) as well as the AUF… most courses are still taught in sheds and temporary buildings.

“We have hosted a lot of universities who are capable of assisting us, but they don’t have the resources to build,” Rector Henry told the magazine Chronicle of Higher Education in an article published last January.

“They can [only] only help us through long-distance courses, scholarships and exchanges,” he added.

A student sits in the yard of the Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Science,
which was badly damaged during the earthquake. Several provisional classrooms
have been built and classes also happen in hot crowded tents. Photo: HGW

In the meantime, at Quisqueya University, a private institution, reconstruction is moving along well. Back in October, the IHRC gave a green light for a project of the Faculty of Medicine, and more recently – last December – the Clinton Bush Fund offered US$914,000 for a “Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.”

“The Center will be a destination for business people of all levels,” the Fund’s Paul Altidor said in an article on the Fund’s website.

The focus of Haiti’s “friends” is clear.

The future in peril

But the study Peril and Promise is also clear, on the necessity to invest in public sector higher education:

Markets require profit and this can crowd out important educational duties and opportunities... The disturbing truth is that these enormous disparities are poised to grow even more extreme, impelled in large part by the progress of the knowledge revolution and the continuing brain drain…

For this reason the Task Force urges policymakers and donors – public and private, national and international – to waste no time. They must work with educational leaders and other key stakeholders to reposition higher education in developing countries.

And that was in 2000.

Have Haitian politicians, donors, and the “citizens” in the north and others trying to take over the King Henry Christophe University read that report?

And Haiti’s past and present governments – who permitted in the past and persist in permitting the deterioration and denigration of a commonly held good, the State University of Haiti – have they been so completely swept away by flood of neoliberal thinking that they don’t see the catastrophe that they have and are in the process of constructing, through non-reconstruction?

Maybe they should go back to school and learn more about the notion of common property, so well described recently by Professor Ugo Mattei. Or to read the study by the World Bank, once a bastion of neoliberal ideology.

Because, if Wells were here in Haiti today, his opinion on would be clear. In the second oldest republic of the hemisphere, “catastrophe” has been ahead of “education” for a long time.

Students from the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti collaborated on this series.

Haiti Grassroots Watch is a partnership of AlterPresse, the Society of the Animation of Social Communication (SAKS), the Network of Women Community Radio Broadcasters (REFRAKA) and community radio stations from the Association of Haitian Community Media.

The “dream house” nightmare

Cité Soleil, Dec. 14, 2011 – While over one million refugees suffered under tents following the January 12, 2010, earthquake, 128 newly constructed homes, finished in May, 2010, sat empty for 15 months.

Today, the majority of these “social housing” units are occupied, but mostly by illegal squatters who broke in by smashing windows and doors.

“The houses have been finished for almost two years, but they have never been officially delivered,” Jean Robert Charles, one of Cité Soleil’s assistant mayors told Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW).

The 128 homes – dream houses compared to where the majority of Haitians live – are in Zoranje, a region of Cité Soleil northeast of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan region. With two bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, kitchen/dining room and a little yard, they are a gift from the Venezuelan government.

A view of some of the "dream houses." Photo: James Alexis

The project cost US$4.9 million, according to a Cuban newspaper writing about the donation in 2010. They are part of a gift of 500 homes promised in March, 2007, by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during a visit to Haiti. A Cuban-Venezuelan firm linked to the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA) cooperation partnership built the houses, according to the same article.

Venezuela is one of Haiti’s most important partners. Among other examples of cooperation, the country sells Haiti gasoline at a preferential price. After the earthquake, with a pledge of US$1.3 million, Venezuela promised more assistance than another other country, even surpassing the pledge from the U.S.

However, it appears the social housing project at Zoranje is something of an embarrassment to the government. On many occasions, HGW tried to obtain an interview with the Venezuelan embassy in the capital. Due to promises not kept and rendezvous missed, the interview never took place.

This might be due to the fact that the homes were only finally occupied in September, 2011, 18 months after Venezuela handed over the first 88 homes to the René Préval government. And because, apart from the 42 families chosen by the embassy, the majority of the homes – at least 50 – are occupied by squatters.

All is not peaceful in the “dream houses”

Forty-two of the 128 housing units were distributed by the Ambassador of Venezuela. The beneficiaries have papers dated September 5, 2011, confirming the deliveries, and all of them told HGW they are victims of the earthquake, from three distinct groups: people working for the embassy, people recommended by a women’s organization, and finally people recommended by a congregational school.

“Venezuela gave 42 homes to people who needed homes” Dolciné Marie Joseph, head of the women’s group, told HGW. She moved in with her children.

 Marie Joseph's home. She preferred not to have her photo taken. Photo: James Alexis

But despite the generous character of the gift, and the obvious advantages of her new home, everyday life is in fact bitter, Marie Joseph said, because dozens of families have invaded the rest of the apartments.

“We haven’t had a coup d’état in the country. I really disapprove of this. What these people have done, moving in without permission, is really bad,” she said indignantly.

According to the Marie Joseph, there are thieves among the squatters.

“They invade the apartments and they have stolen a water pump, [although they couldn’t] take the pump’s motor because it’s underground,” she added. But without the pump, water cannot be pumped up into the water reservoirs that sit on the houses roofs.

The one of the pump rooms. Photo: James Alexis

HGW journalists saw evidence of other vandalism and damage, also: broken mirrors, stolen locks, smashed doors. According to the Cité Soleil mayor, “Even toilets have been stolen.”

Not surprisingly, there is tension between the two groups of residents.

The squatters say they grew tired of “living under tents,” and they told HGW they refuse to be kicked out by the authorities. Several times already, police have tried to dislodge the squatters, but each time they moved back into the homes.

“I have two sons who died in the January 12 earthquake, and I don’t have a home. The mayor thought we didn’t deserve houses,” said Martine Janvier, an elderly woman.

Martine Janvier. Photo: HGW

In the middle of the jubilant crowd of mostly women, another, Jésula Aristène asked out loud, as she held up a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Doesn’t the Haitian state owe us social housing?”

Disagreement and disorganization

The 128 anti-earthquake apartments – painted cream, rose and green – sat empty for a long time because of dissention between the Haitian and Venezuelan governments, according to many sources interviewed by HGW.

The two sides of the partnership – the donor and the recipient – could not agree on the eventual beneficiaries of the project and of the eventual management structure: the “who” and the “how.

A number of authorities contacted by HGW refused to speak on the record, and they all said they did not know who in the Préval government (2005-2011) was in charge of the dossier. However, all unanimously told the same story about the disagreement and the lack of coordination.

A person working on the housing issue at the Interim Haitian Recovery Commission (IHRC) said that, in correspondence with HGW last September, that: “The Venezuelan government and the Haitian government did not agree on how to choose the beneficiaries.”

According to the same source, Venezuela wanted to give the houses to people who were living in the Cité Soleil slum, but the Haitian government didn’t agree.

“The Haitian government argued that the zone wasn’t appropriate for poor people because it lacks work and public services,” the source said.

Questioned about the future of the houses, a member of the Michel Martelly government, who also asked to remain anonymous, said: “We don’t know why the previous administration didn’t make them available to the population. We want to integrate them into the housing stock of the 16/6 project.”

The 16/6 project aims to rehabilitate 16 Port-au-Prince neighborhoods and enable 5,000 families living in six camps to return to their communities of origin. The project costs US$78 million.

According to the Martelly government, “Venezuela reserved and delivered 42 homes to beneficiaries that it identified. Apart from these 42, all the other occupants are illegal.”

Elonge Othélot, the general director of the government Public Entity for the Promotion of Social Housing (Entreprise Publique de Promotion de Logements Sociaux - EPPLS) – the only state agency charged with constructing and managing housing – is not in charge of the Venezuela houses, and was not involved in the discussions between Haitian and Venezuelan authorities. Contacted by HGW, he said he knew that “the project was finished,” but that there had been confusion.

“Maybe the management roles haven’t been determined yet?” he asked himself.

Othélot said that he “approached the First Secretary at the Venezuelan embassy” about the issue. “But, he hasn’t followed up with me to figure out the management question,” he continued.

“The Venezuelans need to decide how they are going to deal with this,” he concluded.

Mayor Charles goes much further. During interviews with HGW, he didn’t mince words when criticizing the representatives of Venezuela in Haiti and the way they have handled the dossier, which he qualified as “disorder.”

Venezuelan authorities refused to speak with HGW on the issue, despite several attempts and one visit to the embassy.

What is the future for the project and the squatters?

The member of the Martelly government said that, for the moment, “the project is being managed by Cité Soleil City Hall,” but he also added that the government is “in the process of setting up a management platform that will be headed by [Colonel Jacques] Azémar,” a former U.S. army officer of Haitian origin.

“We are in the discussions with the mayor’s office and with other government entities like EPPLS so that we can find a way to integrate the different communities” at Zoranje, the source added.

However, Gustave Benoit, another assistant mayor for Cité Soleil contacted on December 9 by HGW, said he is unaware of any implication of Col. Azémar. To the contrary, his office is working with the Ministry of the Women’s Condition and Rights in order to decide the fate of the squatters.

A man in front of his new home. Photo: James Alexis

There are other housing installations near the Venezuela project. Renaissance Village, an apartment complex built by the Jean-Bertrand Aristide government, is currently more or less self-managed according to testimony collected at the site, and a third project, “400 in 100,” aims to build 400 homes with financing from the Inter-American Development Bank.

EPPLS is supposedly responsible for building and managing housing projects, but after January 12, it seems, the agency has been kept out of the reconstruction scene. But the state agency – which is itself miserably housed in a small run-down building – is not involved in any of the major housing projects.

“EPPLS doesn’t have a budget that is up to the task,” Othélot explained.

EPPLS parking lot and office. Photo: HGW

The rusting hulks of cars and trucks in the parking lot bear witness to his words. For this reason – and perhaps others – most of the housing projects EPPLS has built in the past have escaped its control, like the Renaissance Village. Residents rarely pay rent to the state, and in most cases, EPPLS doesn’t even know the names of the tenants.

For the moment, the Venezuela houses appear to be following the same path.

HAITI - OPEN FOR BUSINESS

“Haiti is open for business.”

That’s what President Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly said on November 28 at a ceremony inaugurating a giant industrial zone being built in the north of Haiti.

Across Haiti and abroad, Martelly, his government, and “advisors” like former President Bill Clinton have been pushing Haiti as a foreign investor’s dream come true.

“We are ready for new ideas and new businesses, and are creating the conditions necessary for Haiti to become a natural and attractive destination for foreign investment,” the new president said last fall in New York City.

“The window of opportunity is now,” an aide added. “Haiti has a new President and a new way of thinking about foreign investments and job creation.”

The president might be new, and there might be new actors on the scene, but there’s not much new about the plans. Once again, Haiti’s government and her private sector – and their international supervisors – are pitching sweatshop level salaries as a key “comparative advantage.”

Assembly factories and free trade zones have been part of Haiti’s “development” planning for decades. Now, armed with billions of dollars in grants, loans and private investment, Haitian and foreign governments and business people are building a whole slew of new factory zones as part of the country’s “reconstruction.” 

Worse, they’ve chosen a piece of fertile farmland for the showcase project: a giant industrial park, heavily financed by US$124 million in US taxpayer dollars. Six months from now, South Korean textile giant Sae-A Trading will be opening its doors. Its plants will use a river that runs into the nearby fragile Caracol Bay as its waste waterway. And, in addition running the risk of harming the country’s already devastated environment, the new mega-factory will stitch millions of clothing articles for Wal-Mart, Target, GAP and other US retailers, meaning that more US workers will likely be knocked out of their jobs.

Not one major media outlet – in Haiti or abroad – has explored these and other factors of the what some have touted as a “win-win opportunity” for foreign investors and the Haitian people. Indeed, many journalists have been cheerleaders.

But the “new” Haiti as definite winners and losers.

Haiti Grassroots Watch spent months on an investigation, conducting over three dozen interviews, visiting factory zones and workers in the north and in the capital, and reviewing dozens of academic papers and reports, including one leaked from Haiti’s Ministry of the Environment.

Among the findings: 

•  Haitian workers earn less today than they did under the Duvalier dictatorship.

•  Over one-half the average daily wage is used up lunch and by transportation to and from work.

•  Haiti and its neighbors have all tried the “sweatshop-led” development model – and it has mostly not delivered on its promises.

•  At least six Free Trade Zones or other industrial parts are in the works for Haiti.

•  The new industrial park for the north does not come without costs and risks: Massive population influx, pressure on the water table, loss of agricultural land, and it’s being built steps from an area formerly slated to become a “marine protected area.”

TO LEARN MORE, READ:

1 - Salaries in the “new” Haiti

2 - Anti-union, pro-“race to the bottom”

3 - Why is Haiti “attractive”?

4 - What’s planned for Haiti?

5 - Stepping stone or dead end? Experiences in other countries

6 - The case of Caracol

7 - Industrial Park in Caracol: A “win-win” situation?

Note to readers: stories 6 and 7 are longer than usual because HGW decided to summarize hundreds of pages of studies that have been ignored by journalists, deeming it was in the public interest to assure the public had access to this crucial information. We appreciate readers’ patience. Links are provided to all primary sources.

WATCH:

Haiti Grassroots Watch featured on Al Jazeera English program "The Stream"

Five years for a drop of water

Port-au-Prince, 4 November 2011 – Two-and-a-half million dollars (US$2.5 million) to supply water to several marginal neighborhoods in the capital. Approved in 2006. But, five years later, the water isn’t running yet. Children are still in the streets bearing bottles and buckets.

The project is almost finished. “The end of October,” according to the funder. But not yet.

Why? And why five years? Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) and the students at the State University’s Faculty of Human Sciences investigated.

Unavoidable liquid, inescapable burden

There’s a new reservoir, pipes, and over a dozen water fountains, but the people who live in the poor neighborhoods of Debussy and Upper Turgeau still have to walk for long hours to obtain this live-saving resource. During their daily pilgrimage, the adults and children – who are sometimes only five or six years old –  pass by the dry water kiosks.

Tercy, a university student, lives in Georges City, one of the miserable and informal neighborhoods of Turgeau. He shares a little cement block hut with his sister. Among his other daily activities, Tercy (who didn’t want to reveal his last name), said he has to get up very early to get water before going down to the faculty.

“I leave home at 5:35 am to get two gallons of water. Now its almost 7 am,” he continued, wiping the sweat from his face. Only after the long trek can he bathe and prepare to go to the classroom.

A young boy on one of his daily water
trips.  [Photo - James Alexis]

Emmanuel Lima, carrying a full bucket on his head, relayed the same comments. Alluding to the unfinished water project, he said that “it will be a good opportunity for the neighborhood, but they are taking too long to finish it.”

“In this country, those in power are too negligent. They don’t take care of the really important thing. Everyone just wants to get rich,” the 42-year-old said indignantly.

Lima and Tercy are among the two-thirds of the capital region’s population that has to get their water in buckets, according to 2002 data from the Haitian Institute of Statistics and data processing.

The European Union’s gift of water

In 2006, the European Union (EU) gave the green light to a water project for Debussy and Turgeau, neighborhoods populated by about 25,000 people jammed into huts, many of them on dangerous slopes.

The project’s principal elements:

• A new reservoir in the Debussy hills

• A connection between the new reservoir and the Upper Turgeau reservoir

• A pump for the Upper Turgeau reservoir

• 19 water kiosks in various neighborhoods

• Pipes linking the new reservoir to the fountains

Google map showing the location of the Turgeau reservoir, the new Debussy reservoir,
and the neighborhoods that will benefit (encircled in yellow).

The supervision of the project’s execution was overseen by the following three entities:

The state - The Autonomous Central Metropolitan Water Authority (Centrale Autonome Métropolitaine d’Eau Potable - CAMEP), today called the National Direction of Drinking Water and Sanitation (Direction Nationale de l'Eau Potable et de l'Assainissement - DINEPA) 

The EU - The Technical Unit for Rehabilitation Programs (L’Unité Technique des Programmes  de Réhabilitation - UTPR),

A French "non-governmental organization" (NGO), the Group for Research and Exchange of Technologies (Groupe de Recherche et d'Echanges Technologiques - GRET), which has worked in the area of water in Haiti since 1995.

According to Benoist Bazin, head of the EU’s Infrastructure Section in Haiti, the total cost of the project was about 100 million gourdes or about US$2.5 million. One-quarter, about 25 million gourdes (US$625,000) was spent on the new reservoir and 75 million went for the rehabilitation of the water system by two private companies, and for « social accompaniment » carried out by GRET.

Maxo Saintil, a professor living in the Upper Turgeau area, was among the group of people who, over five years ago, asked the government of put in a water system in order to assuage people’s misery over five years ago. 

In 2006, he was happy to hear the project had been approved.

"The completion of the project will be a victory for us, the initiators, and it will benefit the population who will benefit from its service," he told HGW.

But between the approval and the beginning of work, three years went by.

"The project only started in January, 2009," Saintil remembered.

And 34 months later, the project is still not complete. There are many reasons… and an examination of them will allow the reader not only to learn the "why" but also to learn how "development aid" sometimes works in Haiti.

Studies stumbling blocks

At the beginning, CAMEP, the state organism asking for financial assistance, hadn’t done a study that was well focused nor was it sufficiently in-depth.

According to Robenson Jonas, Léger, coordinator of the EU’s UTPR, the CAMEP report was "incomplete."

“We had to order a complete reservoir study,” Léger wrote to HGW in an email.

The first study recommended a 1,200 cubic meter reservoir. That study, and a geotechnical study cost 246,093.63 gourdes or US$6,152.34.

According to Léger, CAMEP approved the study but at the moment work was about to begin, supervisors expressed certain worries, since the study didn’t account for a possible earthquake. The proposed reservoir was to be elevated above the ground, on supports.

“This was in 2007, and this was a good anticipation of the January 12, 2010, earthquake,” Léger noted.

The second study cost 343,440 gourdes (US$8,586) and was finished on March 19, 2008, two years after the project was originally approved. The second study called for a reduction in the reservoir’s size, from 1,200 to 900 cubic meters, “in order to stay within the limits of the available budget,” according to Léger. The study recommended a reservoir that sat on the ground, which is more expensive.

The Debussy reservoir. [Photo courtesy of WASH Cluster]

The TECINA company signed the contract for design and construction, for 24,073,324.22 gourdes (US$601,833), or about one-quarter of the total budget. But work didn’t begin immediately.

“The work started one year after the signature of contracts,” social worker (and now director) Jean Ledu Annacacis of GRET remembered. If he remembers well, in March 2009.

Nine months later, in December 2009 according to Léger, the work was almost finished. But not yet.

The water still wasn’t flowing.

A kiosk with dry faucets. [Photo - James Alexis]

Disbursement Delays

According to all the actors, there was also a delay in the disbursement of funds which postponed the completion of the project.

Engineer Raphael Hosty, director of the West Department’s office of DINEPA, the state agency that replaced CAMEP, told HGW that the project was slated to take 18 months overall. And that even the necessity of two studies should not have delayed the project so much. According to Hosty, TECINA and the other companies stopped working in December, 2009, because the payments stopped flowing.

Chandler Hypolite, a field agent for GRET, said the neighborhood committees – responsible for managing the water kiosks – were ready to start by the end of December, also.

But the work stopped.

“The companies working on the project stopped receiving money,” he said. “They refused to work… the project came to a halt before the January 12, 2010, earthquake.”

GRET’s Annacacis told the same story.

“I know that [the companies] didn’t get the money they needed to complete the work,” he remembered.

“There was no problem of financing,” the UTPR’s Léger told HGW. “There was perhaps a delay in payment… because in the meantime, we were changing the computer system, which slowed down some of our casework.”

And then – the January 12, 2010, earthquake. Another delay. Not in terms of damage, but because after the disaster the EU had – legitimately – other priorities for many months.

Customs Delays

In addition to the disbursement delays, the Haitian customs office is partly responsible for the slow progress of the project, according to many of the actors, who noted that material was blocked for months.

Not surprisingly, since Haiti’s port and customs offices are world famous for their inefficiency and corruption.

A study by the World Bank cited by the Miami Herald showed that Haiti’s port costs businesspeople and importers twice what they pay in the Dominican Republic, and that getting material out of customs can take three times as long.

Cited in the same article, published in July, 2010, Hughes Desgranges, a senior advisor to the National Port Authority, admitted that the port is more of a “social program” than a “commercial program” because of the salaries paid to “ghost” employees or employees who weren’t necessary.

“You have a port that can be the engine of the Haitian economy, but it's been badly steered,” he said.

Everyone participating in the water project criticized customs, like Hypolite, who criticized: “the pumps were blocked.”

Woman with a five-gallon bucket. [Photo - James Alexis]

Project almost finished, but the water’s still not flowing

Finally, almost two years later, the work is almost finished, but progress has been very slow. Workers don’t come every day and the end date of October 31 was missed. (However, there are indications that the water will start to flow within the coming weeks.)

“The delays in connecting the reservoir with the pipe network weren’t small,” the EU’s Bazin admitted in an interview with HGW on September 27, 2011. “Today the situation is this - the firm need to install the valves on the back of the reservoir that will assure it fills and functions normally.”

Bazin’s frustration was clear.

“When things go well, they never say its because the EU did everything possible to make it work,” Bazin said with an ironic tone. “The same way, one shouldn’t blame the EU [only] when things go badly.”

The reasons for things “going badly” are many – delays in disbursements, at customs, and the two studies.

But could it also be because of the multiplicity of actors? Several government agencies, of the EU, an NGO and three private firms… 

And why was three-quarters of the budget (75 million gourdes or about US$1.875 million) used for the “rehabilitation of networks” and “social accompaniment?” Why were the budgets adjusted after the second study so that a 1,200 meter-cubed reservoir could still be constructed?

HGW could not look into all aspects of this complex project, but it’s probable that the blame does not rest with merely one or another actor. While the percentages of the blame are not known, several things are certain. There is a new reservoir, but with one-third less capacity than initially planned. There are kiosks. And pipes.

But the implementation of a good solution to a daily challenge for 25,000 people has taken more than five years instead of 18 months, and it has a reduced capacity for what is probably a larger population.

While one boy heads off to school, two young women carry water. [Photo - James Alexis]

Nadège Thermilus, a young unemployed 22-year-old woman, has big hopes. Like her friends at her side, she’s on her way to draw water at a place they call “in the mountains,” perhaps about two hours away, round-trip.

Before heading back up to “in the mountains,” she says: “I hope the water comes, because I’ve lived too much misery going to get it.”

Students from the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti collaborated on this series.

Haiti Grassroots Watch is a partnership of AlterPresse, the Society of the Animation of Social Communication (SAKS), the Network of Women Community Radio Broadcasters (REFRAKA) and community radio stations from the Association of Haitian Community Media.

January 12 victims - Abandoned like a stray dog

Eighty thousand tiny houses dot the cities and countryside in the capital and other parts of Haiti devastated by the January 12, 2010, earthquake that killed up to 230,000, damaged or destroyed 171,584 homes and displaced over a million people.

The Bill Clinton-led Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) has approved $254.5 million worth of housing repair and reconstruction projects that will reportedly fix, upgrade or build about 41,759 housing units.

The new government – led by singer Joseph Michel Martelly – recently organized “Reconstruction Week.” Among other activities, Clinton and the president inaugurated a “housing exposition” with over 60 model homes and a new mortgage program called “Kay Pa M” (“My House”).

Strategy announced by the international agencies and government last
November. Has it been followed? Source: Shelter Cluster

Does that mean the reconstruction is off to a good start? Will the 634,000 people still living in Haiti’s 1,001 camps, and the undoubtedly tens of thousands of others living in unsafe and even condemned structures, soon move to safe housing?

Far from it, Haiti Grassroots Watch discovered.

The team of community radio journalists, students and journalists made surprising – and shocking – discoveries in the course of a two-month investigation involving camp-dwellers, humanitarian organizations and authorities in the capital and in the “Palms Region” – the smaller cities of Léogâne, Petit-Goâve and Grand Goâve located near the epicenter of the earthquake, where over 150,000 were made homeless and where today about 24,000 people – about 7,500 families – still live in squalid camps.

Among the findings, 17 months after the earth shook –

•  Even if all of the planned repairs and construction of 68,025 units takes place, that will account for only about 22 percent of the 304,060 victim families counted up in the camps last fall. (Today there are less people in the camps due to various factors, including the expulsions of over 50,000 people, and the return of thousands of families to unsafe lodgings.)

•  Most of the plans and projects announced so far exclude the hundreds of thousands of people who were renters prior to the earthquake.

•  At least 5,400 of the planned new or repaired units are actually slated for Haiti’s North Department – far from the earthquake epicenter and its victims, but right next to the where foreign companies are planning a new industrial park with low-wage assembly factories.

•  Landowners and homeowners are the main group receiving the 116,000 “T-Shelters” (“transitional” or “temporary” shelters) which cost humanitarian agencies and their donors over US$200 million. But over half of the 304,020 displaced families counted last fall – over 173,000 of them – didn’t own a home or land.

•  Most of the camps in the Palms region, and nationwide, lack adequate water and sanitation facilities. People often bathe, and sometimes even defecate, in the open, use unchlorinated water, lack hand-washing facilities and live in squalid, infrahuman conditions in a country where every day hundreds are infected with the deadly Vibrio cholera.

•  No single agency – national or international – is the point institution on reconstruction of housing, although it appears that progress is finally being made in that sense.

Petit Goâve camp resident Louise Delva points to riverbed which she
and others use as an open latrine.

On the other hand –

•  Many of the over 116,000 T-Shelters can be called “semi-permanent” or even better, because they are built on solid foundations, of sturdy material, their walls can be reinforced, and they can be added to by the beneficiary family.

•  The multimillion dollar reconstruction projects in the capital promise to rehabilitate neighborhoods which at least 80,000 households call “home.”

Louise Delva, who didn’t get a T-Shelter, and who isn’t part of the reconstruction projects, lives in a rotting tent in the “Regal” camp with her children on the banks of a riverbed that refugees use as a toilet. Twenty-one camp residents were stricken with cholera in one week earlier this summer. She’s practically given up hope.

“They say we have leaders? We don’t have leaders in this country. They’ve abandoned us, like a stray dog.”

Read

“Transition to what?”

“Being broke is nothing…”

Watch the video, with visits to three camps