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

Cash for Work – At What Cost

“You have to ‘negotiate’ to get a job in the program.”

“Some of us put up with sexual harassment in order to get the tiny amount for survival.”

“The foremen… give the jobs to their relatives and girlfriends.”

“Around here, we don’t think these jobs are really in our interest.”

Published July 18, 2011

These are just some of the comments from participants in a so-called “humanitarian” program in the Ravine Pintade neighborhood in the Haitian capital.

The comments aren’t just random, and the program is not unique. It's one of dozens of “Cash for Work” programs, employing thousands of people, going on around the country.

An in-depth study of the Ravine Pintade program discovered:

Corruption – Thirty percent (30%) of the beneficiaries say they had to pay a kickback for their job.

Sexual abuse – Ten percent (10%) of women beneficiaries say "their friends" had to give sexual favors to get a position.

Social conflict – Many beneficiaries and neighbors say that the program has caused strife, between inhabitants and foremen.

After students from the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti heard rumors about corruption and other unhealthy practices in the Cash for Work program being carried out by CHF International (Cooperative Housing Foundation International), they decided to look into the matter.

Together with Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) – a partnership of the online news agency AlterPresse, the Society for the Animation of Social Communication (SAKS) and community radios – they carried out a two-month research program to answer these questions: How does one get a Cash for Work job and what are the program's impacts?

Is it worth the price?

Cash for Work (CFW) is one of the programs that various governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) use after a disaster to give people work and assure that money is circulating.

In Haiti, the government, multilateral and bilateral agencies and NGOs doing humanitarian work use CFW to remove rubble in the capital and other cities hit by the devastating January 12, 2010, earthquake.

In addition to calling it “Cash for Work,” these kinds of programs are also called “Livelihoods” or “High Intensity Manual Labor” (HIMO in French) in “humanitarian” language. [Haiti Grassroots Watch did a series of articles and a video on CFW last fall.]

HGW's investigation in the fall of 2010 examined the potential negative effects CFW programs can have on Haiti's economy, on people's conceptions of the roles of the government and of "non-governmental organizations" ("NGOs"), on agricultural production, and on the work ethic. This photo from the Central Plateau is typical: two people work while five watch. Photo: HGW

Typically, beneficiaries work for two or four weeks, six days a week, for minimum wage – 200 gourds or about US$5 a day – to clean out ravines, sweep streets, rehabilitate infrastructure (irrigation canals) and remove rubble. The “team boss” or foreman, gets double the salary, or about US$10, according to a CHF document that Haiti Grassroots Watch obtained.

A view of one slope of the ravine. For more on the ravine and on CHF
International's "Katye" program, which includes Cash for Work, see this story.
Photo: HGW

Despite the fact that CWF programs are supposed to be only be used in the early months following a disaster, there are still many active programs in Haiti.

For example, according to their documentation, from January 2010 through January 2011, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the World Food Program (WFP) gave 120,000 people jobs. Those agencies hope to reach a total of 300,000 people by September, 2011. Many other agencies used CFW in the months following the earthquake, also, including: Oxfam, Mercy Corps, Tear Fund and Action Contre la Faim.

In its “Action Plan for National Recovery and Development of Haiti” [PDF], the Haitian government applauded “high-intensity labour [sic] jobs” and asked for US$200 million for 200,000 jobs per day for the 18 months following the disaster. The plan says:

Over and above its economic effects, this creation of jobs addresses the desire to set Haiti on a course to recovery and shorten the humanitarian aid phase which, although vital, threatens to place a large part of the population in a situation of dependency. Creating jobs for the public good will restore both meaning and dignity for all Haitians who wish to provide for their own needs on the basis of their work.

But have Haitians living in the earth-hit zones avoided “situation[s] of dependency?”

Do CFW workers really have a feeling of dignity?

Not according to what HGW journalists found.

These programs – and all programs like them – can play an important role after a catastrophe, and in any economy, but, as humanitarian and development agencies know all too well, they carry with them risks. One of the oft-cited manuals, “Guide to Cash for Work Programming” by Mercy Corps, underlines them clearly, including “fiscal mismanagement and corruption,” problems with “targeting,” and the creation of “dependency."

Chart from the Mercy Corps manual.

Damage and Deviations

A two-month investigation into CHF International’s Cash for Work program revealed that the Mercy Corps manual is right on the money. According to CHF’s beneficiaries, the Ravine Pintade program has spurred corruption, sexual exploitation and social conflict.

Among the 50 beneficiaries questioned, almost one-third (30%) say they were victims of corruption or exploitation. Others who have not yet gotten a job (the journalists interviewed 50 of them), say they were aware of corruption and abuse. Here are the results of the investigation.

NOTE – The journalists could not confirm the claims made by Ravine Pintade residents. However, because various stories resemble one another, and because studies from other institutions in Haiti and abroad speak of similar corruption and other problems, the journalists assume that there are at least elements of truth in the stories they heard.

CFW workers from another organization – Project Concern International – pass
rubble one block and one bucket at a time.  Photo: HGW

Foremen turned "big bosses"

CHF told HGW journalists that beneficiaries are chosen according to a CHF-conducted census which indicates which residents are most vulnerable.

“Our program is aimed at giving jobs to the poorest residents of Ravine Pintade,” CHF International’s Emmanuel Whapo told HGW.

However, a CHF promotional flyer implies that the "team leaders" and "leaders" of the area have a lot of influence in choosing beneficiaries, since it says "CHF works with neighborhood committees to choose workers..."

And, during the multiple visits to work sites, journalists noted that the majority of workers did not appear to be typical "vulnerable" residents (older, etc.) Instead, they were young men and women who appeared to be well-fed and in excellent health. The workers said they were chosen by the foremen, who themselves have been chosen because they are the supposed “leaders” of the neighborhood, according to CHF. These young men decide who will, and who will not, get “cash.”

Despite the insufficient salary – about US$5 a day – many Ravine Pintade residents say they would like to land a two-or four-week contract. But they also claim: to get a job, you need a personal connection to a foreman.

 “Ever since the program started, we have been waiting for a chance to work… They’ve never visited us over here. We’ve showed them that even though it is a ‘miserable’ 200 gourde salary, we’re interested. But you need a ‘godfather,’” said the indignant 65-year-old Jeanne César.

The comments and accusations encountered by journalists resemble findings of a September 24, 2010, audit which the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) [PDF] carried out on its Cash for Work programs last year. The study reported:

Because CFW employment provides significant benefits for individuals in impoverished communities, transparency in the selection of workers is necessary to demonstrate fairness….

Furthermore, because CFW benefits can be misappropriated, reasonable controls to prevent corruption, nepotism, and kickbacks should be in place.

The same audit noted that in 2010, to choose beneficiaries, CHF “involved local officials as well as community leaders, nonpolitical community organizations, and implementing partner staff.”

More recently, a UNDP study found the same kinds of problems.

A “Powerpoint” presentation called “Preliminary lessons learnt from Cash Programming in Haiti," shown during a February 16, 2011, meeting noted that in Grand Goâve, the Lutheran World Foundation “experienced problems where the local government and local gangs (with guns) were pushing to have their ‘own people’ fill at least 10% of the lists.” The same study noted that Oxfam received from City Hall a “list provided by a mairie [town hall]… full of ‘ghost’ beneficiaries.”

A slide from UNDP presentation.

One of the former Ravine Pintade foremen confirmed the same phenomenon of corruption and abuse of power within the CHF program.

“Here, the foremen rule all. They give their friends work, and what’s really bad is that a lot of their family members work in the program at the same time as the people who are really supposed to benefit don’t get jobs. There are also people who have been working since the program started,” claimed Jean Bernard Chaperon, former advisor to the Association of Young Progressives of Haiti, and a resident of the area for over 40 years.

Chaperon said he quit the foreman job because he himself was a victim of corruption, over a misunderstanding regarding a 1,300 gourde ($32.50) kick-back.

CHF staffperson Whapo told journalists he was aware of the corruption in the program, but noted that he wasn’t empowered to intervene into community conflicts.

“We’ve received a lot of complaints from beneficiaries but we aren’t here to help the community members with their quarrels. They need to find a way to get along,” Whapo said.

Paying to get paid

Thirty percent (30%) of beneficiaries contacted by journalists said that they have paid for, or been asked to pay for, getting or keeping a job.

“I am a victim of their aggression because I decided not to pay part of my salary. Ever since then I haven’t been able to work in the program,” Jeannette Romelus, wife of local Pastor Romain Romelus, explained.

“The foremen wanted 30 Haitian dollars from each beneficiary in order to stay in the program,” according to Pastor Romelus, Jeannette Romelus’ husband. That’s 150 gourdes of the 2,400 gourdes received for 12 days of work, or about US$3.75 out of the US$60 total.

“The foremen are not qualified. They don’t even know how to read. They have the jobs because they know how to boss people around… If you don’t pay, you can’t stay in the program,” said an angry Sylvain Ronel, a direct beneficiary.

According to Chaperon, the ex-foreman, one of the foremen draws up a list of potential workers, and then asks each one for 500 gourdes (US$12.50) each on the side.

During journalists’ visits to the area, the same foreman pressured CFW workers not to respond to questions. Not surprisingly, victims often remain silent because denouncing abuses results in exclusion from the program.

Just some of the Cash for Work programs in Port-au-Prince, April, 2010.

Sexual Negotiation

Even sadder is the fact that certain women say a lot of them have traded their bodies for jobs. Many say they have “friends” who have “negotiated,” but none of them admit to being victims themselves.

For example, Claire Desrosiers Maryse noted: “I don’t want to accuse anyone in particular, but a lot of women sell what they have to get work.”

Armelle Desrosiers, a woman working as part of a CFW team, denounced the abuses that her co-workers have suffered in order to get a tiny salary.

“The foremen have the habit of buying the consciences of the women, and demanding that they have sex with them in order to get a job,” she said.

Even though it wasn’t possible to confirm the denunciations of beneficiaries and residents about the sexual exploitation, on many occasions journalists noted that certain foremen hassled women at the work sites.

In addition, the aforementioned UNDP report found the same phenomenon in its survey. Save The Children confirmed that committee members had demanded “sexual favors” in exchange for plots on beneficiary lists.

Asked about the subject, however, foreman Reginald Luxama denied that anything of the sort occurred.

“We don’t have those kinds of things here,” he said. “The community has confidence In us.”

CHF not satisfied with Cash for Work either, but for other reasons…

CHF staffpeople interviewed by HGW journalists admitted that the program is burdened by a number of problems. But rather than focus on the corruption, they put the accent on efficiency.

“In my opinion, Cash for Work is a real waste because the beneficiaries don’t really want to implicate themselves in the process of removing rubble from their zones,” Anne Young Lee, director of CHF’s Katye project, told HGW journalists.

“They are not proud of the work they do with this system. People don’t really work, they just laze around and get paid for it… I don’t like the mentality of Cash for Work. To get things done, the system needs to be changed.”

CHF is in the process of replacing “Cash for Work” with “Cash for Production,” a new system where workers will be paid for the actual amount of work done, rather than being paid just for showing up. [See our previous series for more on how CFW workers do not always “work.”] CHF hopes the new program will be more efficient.

But…

Even if the program is more efficient in terms of rubble removal from neighborhoods, will it resolve the problems of corruption, sexual exploitation and social conflicts?

Perhaps the bad “mentality” to which Young refers stems from the method of recruitment and the corruption?

Other institutions are using Cash for Work all over the country. Have they found a way to protect people against corruption?

Has the government – which has given organizations like CHF huge latitude to organize high-intensity manual labor programs – found a solution to the dangers of using “cash” in the numerous “emergency” and “development” programs?

And, what kind of long-term effects might these programs – which reinforce paternalistic, “big boss” structures – have on Haitian society?

Read more about the Katye program and about CHF International in this story.

Read CHF's reaction to this story.

Students from the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti's Faculty of Human Sciences collaborated on this series. A student from American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop also assisted.

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.

In order to carry out this study, during a two-month period (March and April, 2011) journalists interviewed 50 beneficiaries in five zones of Ravine Pintade, and 50 people who had not yet benefited from the program, as well as five foremen (the men who choose the workers) and three representatives of CHF International. The journalists also consulted studies and reports from CHF as well as from those published by other organizations concerning Cash for Work.




Behind the closed doors of Port-au-Prince "reconstruction"

Port-au-Prince, June 9 2011 – Why hasn't reconstruction begun in downtown Port-au-Prince, the area of Haiti most savagely hit by the January 12, 2010, earthquake?

Why are there still tent cities surrounding the National Palace?

Why is planning conducted and decided behind closed doors, with secret contracts nobody sees?

Why are the beneficiaries – the capital’s poor majority – also kept out out of the planning and in the dark?

Source: CHF International

Two new investigations by Haiti Grassroots Watch and students from the Laboratoire du Journalisme at the State University of Haiti tried to figure out what is blocking the reconstruction of downtown, and why the Champ de Mars is still home to thousands of families.

Journalists found a lack of transparency, lack of coordination, rivalry and sometimes even outright disagreement, in a context where no single authority seems to have a complete picture, or accept complete responsibility.

The results of the impasse or – at the very least – confusion? Thousands of families braving the rains, winds and cholera under tarps and infrahuman conditions, undisbursed funding, and a rubble-strewn downtown characterized by empty plots and dying businesses.

Read the two series here:

   Impasse? What's blocking the capital's reconstruction?

   While the heroes are watching

Students from the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti's Faculty of Human Sciences collaborated on this series.

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

Source for the photo on the "index" page: Newbeatphoto