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Pace of Haiti re-construction slows
Martelly was a critic of the panel when he ran for office, and the first of his three picks for prime minister, Daniel-Gerard Rouzier, summed up its performance in a view shared by many Haitians. He called it “dysfunctional.”
In the end, Martelly changed his mind. He announced at the IHRC’s seventh meeting in July that he wanted to see the mandate renewed for another 12 months while a Haitian entity was created to take over. Bellerive named six people to serve as board members from the executive branch. He also named a new interim executive director, a position that had been vacant since her predecessor resigned in April.
According to Interim Executive Director Ann-Valerie Milfort and Dep. A. Rodon Bien-Aime, Martelly submitted a request to parliament before it expired.
Lawmakers took no action. The panel dissolved.
“It all happened so unceremoniously,” said Priscilla Phelps, a post-disaster housing expert whose consulting firm TCG International was hired by USAID to help map out a housing plan. “Right until the end people thought there was a good chance it would be extended.”
The shape of a successor is still being figured out by a transition team and Conille, a former chief of staff to Clinton who brought his experience as a U.N. development expert to the original IHRC.
Some reconstruction work is taking place.
This month, Martelly and international partners finished clearing out a town square that relief agencies say once housed as many as 11,000 people. It was one of the last projects the IHRC approved before it disbanded. And on Monday, the president and Clinton are scheduled to tour the construction site of a US$225 million industrial park in northern Haiti that’s supposed to create 20,000 jobs, another IHRC project.
But effective reconstruction is unlikely to happen without the grand master plan as championed by Clinton and the panel.
