SAINT-LOUIS-DU-SUD, Haiti (AP) — Roughly 30,000 children out of some four million nationwide live in about 750 orphanages across Haiti, according to government figures. Many were built after the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed at least 200,000 people.

In the months that followed, the number of orphanages in Haiti skyrocketed by 150 per cent, leading to an increase in trafficking, forced labour and abuse.

A 2018 report by Haiti’s Institute of Social Welfare and Research and others found that just 35 of 754 orphanages — less than five per cent — met minimum standards and were allowed to operate. Meanwhile, 580 orphanages received the lowest score, meaning the government should order them closed.

Mylouise Veillard was 10 when her mother dropped her off at an orphanage in southern Haiti and promised her a better life. For three years, Mylouise slept on a concrete floor. When she was thirsty, she walked to a community well and hauled heavy buckets of water herself. Meals were scarce, and she lost weight. She worried for her younger brother, who struggled even more than she did at the facility.

It’s a familiar story among the estimated 30,000 Haitian children who live in hundreds of orphanages where reports of forced labour, trafficking, and physical and sexual abuse are rampant. In recent months, Haiti’s government has stepped up efforts to remove hundreds of these children and reunite them with their parents or relatives as part of a massive push to shut down the institutions, the vast majority of which are privately owned.

Social workers are leading the endeavor, sometimes armed with only a picture and a vague description of the neighbourhood where the child once lived. It’s an arduous task in a country of more than 11 million people with no residential phonebooks and where many families have no physical address or digital footprint.

“They’re almost like detectives,” said Morgan Wienberg, co-founder and executive director of Little Footprints, Big Steps, one of several nonprofits that help reunite children and families. “It definitely comes down to a lot of persistence.”

The social workers fan out through cities, towns and villages. They walk up hills, navigate mazes of tin-roof shacks and knock on doors. With a smile, they hold up a picture and ask whether anyone recognises the child.

They find that some orphanages relocated children without notifying their parents, or families were forced to flee violence in their community and lost touch with their kids.

On occasion, social worker Jean Rigot Joseph said he’ll show children pictures of landmarks to see if they remember where they lived. If he locates the parents, he’ll first determine whether they’re open to reunification before revealing he found their child.

Like more than 80 per cent of children in Haiti’s orphanages, Veillard and her brother are considered “ poverty orphans.” Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, with about 60 per cent of the population making less than $2 a day. When parents can’t afford to feed their children, they temporarily place them in orphanages, where they believe they’ll received better care.

“When parents give up their kids to orphanages, they really don’t see it as giving their children up forever,” Wienberg said.

In response to the report, Haiti’s government has banned construction of new orphanages and shut down existing ones. But closing orphanages can be dangerous. Government officials have been threatened or forced to go into hiding as owners seek to keep generous donations flowing from abroad; US faith-based donors are the largest funders of orphanages in Haiti, according to Lumos, a nonprofit that works to reunite children in orphanages worldwide with their families.

There is no group or association that speaks on behalf of orphanages in Haiti since the vast majority are individually owned.