Mass relocation for Haiti homeless

[tabatha]

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Haitian officials launched a huge operation Thursday to move hundreds of thousands of homeless outside their ruined capital, as medics worked feverishly to treat the countless injured.

"It is difficult to work as before, but we're on course to regain control," President Rene Preval told reporters, countering charges that the government has been largely absent since the January 12 quake.

Alongside the Haitian plan, French and US rescue workers have begun to clear debris and human waste from around the city's ceremonial square, the Champ de Mars, which has become a giant ad hoc refugee camp.

And US forces are also repairing the main port, hoping to slowly re-open it from Friday and bring in enough aid to feed people across the country. Hundreds of Haitians still throng the quays waiting for boats out of the city.

The government said it would try to relocate an estimated 500,000 left destitute by the 7.0-magnitude quake, moving them out of squalid, stinking bivouacs into temporary accommodation outside Port-au-Prince.

"The government has made available to people free transportation. A large operation is taking place: we're in the process of relocating homeless people," said Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/haitiquake

[Sisaruus]

1. As long as they don't self-determine relocation

If they are caught leaving the country, the U.S. will graciously take them to a tent city at Guantanamo.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/21/guantanamo-haiti-refugees_n_430863.html

[Dappleganger]

2. This is good but it will be very messy...

boats designed to hold several hundred have more than a thousand on them (overloaded). No support in regards to housing, food, massive hospitals or infrastructure where they're going. The Haitiens who are there will be quickly overwhelmed by the city folks (and yes, just like in most places city folks behave differently than country folk).

I would like to see their plans for how they're going to set up these cities. If I had to live on that side of the island there's no way in hell that it'd be directly on the fault in Port.