The Mercy Corps Blog

Blog Post Posted January 27, 2010, 10:00 am by Roger Burks

Rubble, lines and food

Two weeks after the earthquake, the streets of Port-au-Prince are filled with rubble, lines and food. All of these things are related.

There's more and more fruits and vegetables available every day in Port-au-Prince. Photo: Roger Burks/Mercy Corps

The rubble is everywhere: houses, businesses, hospitals and schools lay in ruins, just as they did in the immediate aftermath. Winding through that rubble are all kinds of lines: people waiting for relief supplies, people waiting at banks in hope to collect money wired from relatives abroad, and people waiting to apply for a job.

And, in the midst of this rubble and these lines, there is food — bright, colourful, fresh produce being sold a few pieces at a time by local businesswomen. Some stores are beginning to reopen. Small commerce is returning to Port-au-Prince’s markets.

But very few survivors can buy any of this food. The earthquake not only took their homes and loved ones, but their livelihoods. And so they go hungry even though, in most of the neighborhoods where families are living under makeshift shelters near what once were their houses, there is food around the corner or just steps away.

Banks have been open for several days -- but the lines are long. Photo: Roger Burks/Mercy Corps

Even before the earthquake, Haiti’s families struggled to feed themselves: at least 54 percent of Haitians lived on less than one dollar a day. Unemployment rates were an almost unbelievable 70-80 percent. Malnourished children accounted for around one-third of that population.

And now, in the aftermath of this catastrophe, we can be sure that these numbers have skyrocketed.

There are so many needs on the ground here. We are continuing to address the nutritional needs of survivors through delivery of food and coordination with colleague agencies on the ground. But handing out food to survivors is a short-term solution, not a long-term strategy.

Remittances — like the wired money that survivors are standing in long lines to collect from banks — account for £1 billion dollars each year here in Haiti. That accounts for a staggering 16 percent of the country’s economy. But again, this is not a sustainable way of lifting large populations from poverty, and only a small percentage of the Haitian people are receiving money this way.

We need to get people back to work so that they can buy the food that is more abundant by the day in their own neighborhoods.

Beginning Monday, we are launching a cash-for-work programme to help survivors do just that. Our team has been working hard to identify deeply poor, earthquake-affected neighborhoods that will most benefit from an influx of cash to the local economy — to local households.

We will employ at least 7,000 workers to clean up debris and garbage, repair infrastructure and build or fix water systems. These workers will receive a fair daily wage for their labour, which will help their families — almost 50,000 people total — buy the food and other supplies they need to survive, then start to rebuild.

Cash-for work is a programme approach with proven results in disaster aftermaths, including post-tsunami Indonesia and Myanmar after a devastating cyclone.

We will help earthquake survivors clean up the rubble and build back their neighborhoods, better and safer than ever. We will help bring a day when people aren’t queuing for jobs or remittances, but instead lining up at local markets to buy their own food.