PORT AU Prince, Haiti, CMC – A Caribbean Community (CARICOM) delegation is due in Haiti on Saturday for talks with President Rene Preval and other officials as the country recovers from the January 12 earthquake that killed an estimated 200,000 people and left more than one million homeless.
The delegation is being led by Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, the current CARICOM Chairman, and will include former Jamaica Prime Minister, PJ Patterson, who has recently been appointed CARICOM Special representative to Haiti.
CARICOM Secretary General Edwin Carrington is also included in the delegation for the one-day trip that would involve discussions with the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) personnel, who have been coordinating the region’s assistance to the French CARICOM country.
The Jamaica government Friday reversed a decision to withdraw members of the JDF after being given an assurance that other Caribbean countries would be contributing to the regional recovery efforts.
The JDF base facilitates CARICOM troops as well as Jamaican health workers and Kingston said that the daily price tag of J$773,000 (US$86,000) was too high for one country alone to bear.
But Information Minister Daryl Vaz said the decision to reverse the withdrawal of Jamaican personnel followed the assurance from the Barbados-based Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) that it would be sending J$40 million ( US$449, 000) to cover expenses incurred up to January 30”.
Meanwhile, former United States president Bill Clinton flew into Haiti on Friday in his expanded role as United Nations coordinator of international quake relief efforts, and immediately pledged to see the tasks through to its successful conclusion “long after the television crews have gone and emergency response teams have returned to their home countries”.
“Flying into Port-au-Prince for the second time since the earthquake, I was pleased to see continued signs of an expanding relief effort,” Clinton said in a statement on the Clinton Foundation website.
Clinton was briefed by UN staff about the current situation on the ground particularly as relief efforts have faced a series of daunting challenges.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Clinton UN Special Envoy for Haiti last May, following a visit they made together two months earlier to raise awareness of efforts to help its people and Government bolster economic security of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
Earlier this week, he asked the former president to assume a leadership role in coordinating international quake relief efforts, from emergency response to reconstruction to launching a new funding appeal.
Meanwhile, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reiterated that shelter remains an urgent need, with the focus on providing emergency shelter closer to home or in smaller camps to reduce dislocation.
OCHA said sanitation is also a significant concern, especially at temporary shelters.
Copyright 2010 News Montserrat, Andrews Publishing Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or distributed.