Haiti's government emerges from the rubble

BY ERICA VIRTUE Observer Writer virtuee@jamaicaobserver.com

Friday, February 05, 2010

MINUSTAH BASE, Port-au-Prince, Haiti -- The government of Haiti is emerging from the rubble of the earthquake devastation, and is now telling aid agencies it will begin to set the priority of international aid efforts, the Observer has been told.

Following the conclusion of a meeting of the daily intelligence briefing sessions, chief operations officer Shayne Gilbert, of the Joint Operations and Tasking Centre (JOTC) at MINUSTAH's UN headquarters, told the Observer that the co-ordination efforts were critical to the success of the entire operation here.

Gilbert said the government of Haiti is helping to set the priority of the aid efforts.

According to him, President Rene Preval and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive had requested daily reports of the intelligence briefings, in an effort to update the Haitian people, many of whom are already of the view that aid agencies are running the country.

"At the moment, it is not as co-ordinated as we would want. But the president and the prime minister and the government itself they were severely damaged as well, so that they had to recover themselves, but they are now setting up structures where they are now gradually as a government, assigning responsibilities for the crisis response," Gilbert told the Observer.

Several government officials and ministries collapsed during the January 12 quake which , according to latest reports, left some 200,000 dead, thousands missing and much of the capital Port-au-Prince reduced to rubble.

The ministry of foreign affairs is now operating out of offices previously used by the Organisation of American States (OAS).

"We are now working better with the government and a number of high-level committees are going to be set up to define the priorities as they see it, and we will advise them on what we think humanitarian priorities are," Gilbert said.

He said the co-ordination of relief supplies and personnel for earthquake-ravaged Haiti remains a challenge for the different agencies operating in the country.

"When you have such a large-scale crisis and when you have so many international partners including the Caricom contingent... we are trying to make sure here that all of the international support systems are able to work and support the humanitarian effort that is here," he said.

In addition, there are some 20,000 personnel from the United States alone, as well as some 2,000 Canadians, plus others from Sri Lanka, Spain, Brazil and Caricom, he said.

There were thousands of humanitarian workers in Haiti since 2004, according to Gilbert, but the earthquake has sent thousands more, and the daily intelligence meetings provide reports on the co-ordination and assistance efforts of all the humanitarian and military efforts in the country.

In addition, the meetings give all the agencies an opportunity to air issues affecting the different missions.