Digicel to rebuild 20 primary schools in Haiti
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Mobile phone provider Digicel Group Ltd has pledged to rebuild 20 primary schools across Haiti during the launch of a charity.
Two schools will be rebuilt in each of Haiti’s 10 departments as part of the Digicel Haiti Foundation, the Jamaica-based company said in a statement. The schools had been damaged by past hurricanes and flooding.
Digicel’s chairman, Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien, called the initiative a show of appreciation 10 months since the mobile provider began offering service in the impoverished Caribbean nation.
The company reached one million customers in December and has spent more than US$260 million (euro197 million) in Haiti so far, the largest single private investment in the country’s history.
O’Brien spoke at a ceremony to inaugurate the first rebuilt primary school, a 240-student facility in the rural outskirts of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Digicel is the largest mobile phone provider in the Caribbean, offering service in 22 countries and territories.