HAITI, January 21, 2010. — Haiti launched yesterday a huge operation to rehouse in different part of the country thousands of people who lost their homes in the January 12 earthquake, AFP reported. "The government has provided free transportation for the population. It’s a massive operation: we are in the process of moving the homeless," Haitian Interior Minister Paúl Antoine Bien-Aime stated. He explained that camps with the capacity to shelter up to 10,000 victims each are to be established. At least 500,000 people were left homeless just in the Haitian capital, where 447 improvised camps have been set up, according to the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM). "We have three priorities: the first is to continue providing humanitarian aid; the second is to provide security and stability for Haiti, and the third is to begin the reconstruction effort," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon affirmed, according to Notimex. Prensa Latina reported that the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) has called on all Haiti’s international creditors to find ways of canceling the credit obligations of that devastated nation. (Cubaminrex – Granma Internacional) |