ONE YEAR after the Haitian earthquake, the country’s government needs to provide increased leadership to rehouse the one million people still living in camps, aid agency Trócaire said.
It called for the establishment of a land commission in Haiti to tackle the homeless crisis.
Trócaire also said the international community needs to support the Haitian authorities in ensuring money pledged for reconstruction is spent well and stressed the importance of restoring political stability in the wake of last month’s elections.
The agency said reconstruction efforts have been hampered by weak government, with just 5 per cent of rubble from the earthquake removed to date.
“The scale of the disaster in Haiti was massive and the problems caused by the earthquake were never going to be cleaned up overnight,” said head of Trócaire’s international department Mike Williams. “However, it is extremely frustrating to note that, one year after the disaster, one million people are still living in tents.”
With less than 5 per cent of land officially accounted for in public land records, the vast majority of Haitians have been unable to prove ownership of the land they lived on prior to the earthquake.
The earthquake, which struck on January 12th, 2010, killed about 230,000 people and injured another 300,000.
