By David Blair
Published: January 28 2010 02:00 | Last updated: January 28 2010 02:00
The fate of the 690,000 homeless people cast on to the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, is rapidly becoming one of the most urgent dilemmas in the aftermath of this month's earthquake.
Almost every patch of open ground across the city is filled with makeshift camps of the destitute. Some have thousands of inhabitants, others only scores. All become more squalid, and more of a health risk, every day.
Aid has reached many of the 591 camps, but deliveries often have little correlation to need. Shelter is the most obvious necessity for people whose houses have been destroyed, but comparatively few tents have been handed out. Sanitation is another obvious requirement - and one that is frequently neglected.
A camp beside Boulevard Toussaint L'Ouverture, home to thousands of people, has few tents and one portable lavatory. People use sheets, curtains and blankets, salvaged from the ruins of their homes, to fashion ragtag shelters. They have little choice but to defecate in the open.
Nature has bestowed one mercy on Port-au-Prince: there has been no rain since the January 12 magnitude 7.0 quake. If this changes, however, many camps would soon become fetid quagmires, raising the possibility of an epidemic of water-borne disease.
Aid workers acknowledge that Port-au-Prince is one thunderstorm away from another tragedy.
The annual rains start in April or May, followed by the Caribbean hurricane season in July. Unless the homeless are given shelter by then, the potential for enormous suffering is -obvious.
"It's something that's hanging over our heads every single day," said Niurka Pineiro, from the International Organisation for Migration, which coordinates shelter for the homeless. "It's a race against the clock because May is coming."
Despite the urgency, there is no agreed plan on how to address the problem. In principle, Haiti's government will select sites where the United Nations will construct vast new tented camps, complete with sanitation and water. The tents will eventually give way to permanent homes, built by the beneficiaries themselves, in return for payment in food.
So far, however, only two such sites have been identified for the capital's homeless. They have capacity for 14,000 people - barely 2 per cent of the total. At present, there is only enough funding for permanent homes for 10,000 people.
The supply of tents remains far below the level of need. The UN gives contradictory figures on the number delivered to Port-au-Prince airport.
Last Friday, an official spokesman announced that 20,000 tents "arrived yesterday". The IOM, however, says that only 10,000 tents are in Haiti, with another 30,000 "in the pipeline".
None will be distributed to the camps scattered across Port-au-Prince. Instead, they will be used for the vast new camps - but only after the sites have been identified.
How the legions of homeless will be transported to these locations, and whether they will be given any choice in the matter, remains unclear.
The people on the streets are resigned to a long wait. "Only God knows how long we will be here," said Sineuse Maculen, 35, who lives with her three children at the camp beside Boulevard Toussaint L'Ouverture.
Her shelter, fashioned from a large tarpaulin and home to 23 people, is comparatively robust. Even so, Mrs Maculen fears the consequence of a storm.
"If it rains, we will be invaded by water," she said. "We want a tent and then we want to go to another place where we can build a new home."
Many camps display banners pleading for the attention of the relief workers. One sign, scrawled in a black marker pen on a white curtain, carries the English words: "Help us, please. We need food, water, shelter."
Nearby, Isaac Frendy, 36, pointed at the hard ground on which his two children have slept since the quake destroyed their home. "We have children here, sleeping on these stones. Is that good for them?" he said.
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