Frustration over Haiti quake aid delays

The aid flooding into Haiti is not reaching earthquake victims quickly enough to stem growing unrest due to transport bottlenecks, officials said today.

Many aid workers and Haitians say ample donations are arriving, but have complained that the pace of distribution of food and medicine from Port-au-Prince’s ports, airport and storage facilities in its Cite-Soleil slum is slow.

Dr Rob Maddox, of the Start, Louisiana organisation, said: “There’s no top-down leadership. And since the Haitian government took control of our supplies, we have to wait for things even though they’re stacked up in the warehouse.

“The situation is just madness.”

US air traffic controllers have lined up 2,550 incoming flights through to March 1, but around 25 flights a day are not taking their slots, with multiple communication breakdowns between Haitians and their foreign counterparts.

Mike O’Keefe, who runs Banyan Air Service in Fort Lauderdale, said: “Aid is bottlenecking at the Port-au-Prince airport. It’s not getting into the field.”

Haitians complain that corrupt officials have started to manipulate some of the aid that does reach the streets.

Hundreds of angry people protested in the streets of Petionville today, jogging down a broad avenue waving branches and singing, “They stole the rice, they stole the rice.”

Boxes of supplies are stacked to the ceiling in the dimly lit warehouse of the capital’s hospital. In another storage area, medicine, bandages and other key supplies pile up on tables – watched over by a Haitian health worker who ticks off everything that comes in and out.

Doctors say since locals took over the supply room, crucial time to save lives has been lost filling out unnecessary forms.

Donors have raised key logistical challenges: grappling with a barely functioning government, the backlog of flights, a damaged port, clogged overland routes from outlying airports and the Dominican Republic, and security.

Aid agencies say food and water deliveries have about doubled in the past 10 days, but some relief workers are frustrated at how long it takes to move other supplies out of the UN’s warehouses.

UN officials said yesterday that more than 100 ships are en route to Haiti, but the capital’s port has limited capacity, with ships requiring their own cranes and other offloading equipment.

The January 12 disaster killed at least 150,000 people and demolished virtually every government building in the capital. Around one million people are homeless, with many huddling in crude tents and bed sheets.