Haiti prime minister: Quake victims ‘don’t want to be relocated’
VIDEO - Haiti is starting a campaign to demonstrate how important it is for residents to move before more land slides or other natural disasters occur...
The Haitian people are being forced to create a new way of life after the earthquake. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive says that in some places as many as 15 to 20 people are living together in one temporary shelter.
Bellerive himself has to cope with the fact that 15 key government offices have been either destroyed or heavily damaged since the quake. Both Bellerive and Haitian president Rene Preval have been working out of sparsely furnished rooms where they have received heads of state and dignitaries like former President Bill Clinton. The daily press meetings have been held in the parking lot under a mango tree.
Interviewed at the end of February in a temporary office at the main police station in Port-au-Prince next to the airport, Bellerive discusses the town of Pétionville, which is currently experiencing land slides like a lot of Haiti. The residents of Pétionville will have to be removed by force for their own safety. Most people, he says, do not want to be relocated.
Haiti is starting a campaign to demonstrate how important it is for residents to move before more landslides or other natural disasters occur. The country has started to move a lot of the rubble with the assistance of the U.S. and other foreign nations. However, Haiti is nowhere near where it needs to be in terms of the recovery effort.
