PORT-AU-PRINCE, Nov 27 (IPS) – People hurrying home late or rising early for work run a gauntlet of wheelbarrows and barrels full of human faeces to be dumped into city sewers or – more often – left standing in the streets.

And from these same sewers, car washers here in the centre of the Haitian capital fill their buckets and others use them for more mundane daily needs.

To say that the urban environment is deteriorating does not capture the magnitude of the decline in Haiti’s larger cities, especially when it comes to garbage disposal and the management of water resources.

‘’Catastrophic’’ is the key word often used by Yrnel Joseph, a specialist in pollution control trained in Canada, who returned to Haiti a few months ago.

‘’The boats intended for the collection of garbage sometimes sail out to sea half empty, but people prefer to throw their rubbish out on the street and just forget about it’’, he explained.

This young professional notes that effluent from paint manufacturing factories and electrical power plants flows untreated into sewers, or into the sea where plants located along the coast. He also notes that bio-medical wastes are not burnt, and that management of the country’s water resources appears to be nonexistent.

The purification rates for urban waste was 43 percent in 1990, according to estimates made by the Ministries of Planning and of External Cooperation, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The problem of collecting solid wastes has not been tackled, despite attempts by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Haitian government to relieve the city mayors of this task and turn it over to three private companies.

‘’As soon as there is a budget appropriation for this job, conflict immediately breaks out among those state organisations involved in this sector in order to grab the largest share of the available funds, with the result that the garbage remains uncollected,’’ says Minister of the Environment Yves Andre’ Winwight, with a gesture of impotence.

For the moment, the authorities are reluctant to accept the offer from an American company to install an power station that would use garbage as fuel for the turbines.

‘’This firm promised to sell electricity us at a much lower price than what the national electricity company charges. They asked us for guarantees on their investment’’, commented one official from the Ministry of the Environment in an interview with IPS.

‘’All of this may seem tempting, but when we go more deeply into the question, we have to ask ourselves where are they going to find the 2,500 tonnes of garbage needed daily to fuel the generators, since the capital only produces 1,200,’’ he added.

The Haitian capital indeed has a hard time handling the tonnes of waste. Of the more than 1,000 tonnes of solid waste produced daily, only 25 percent is collected and treated for elimination in unauthorised discharge basins.

The absence of rigid controls on imported consumer products that damage the environment are also a cause for concern for Haitian environment officials, who have received several applications for authorisation to set up a factory for recycling aluminum cans and old vehicles.

Water management is one of priorities in the environmental reconstruction programme to be worked out during the first 100 days of Prime Minister Claudette Werleigh’s newly appointed government.

Some 82 percent of the wells supplying the capital with potable water have pronounced faecal pollution.

According to the environment minister, the mismanagement of water is one of the main contributors to the high cost of living, since water is a basic resource used in the catering business, laundries and soft drinks, which are consumed on a large scale by poorer citizens at meal times.

Yet scenes of water being squandered can be seen every day throughout the country. One engineer told IPS that at Chaudeau, a catchment dam six Kms southwest of the capital, broken taps on all of the public fountains within a radius of two Kms run day and night, as they have for the past seven years, causing the loss of several thousand litres of water daily that are estimated to be enough for the needs of 200 people.

The investment needed repairs would be approximately eight to ten dollars per tap. In comparison, the 9,500 litres of water being lost each day would cost between 25 and 35 dollars if charged by private suppliers in Port-au-Prince.

The more the Minister of the Environment becomes familiar with these problems, the more he realises that his ministry simply does not have the means to try and solve them.

Immediate or long-term action on environmental problems costs money, but the Haitian government does not have the funds to dedicate to resolving these issues.

But Minister Winwight has reason to wonder how viable the reconstruction programme’s water management goals can be if the national government cannot even give him the necessary funds to open up local branches of his ministry in the country’s various regions, where ministry presence is lacking.

In fact, the government has only appropriated a total of 19 million gourdes (one million dollars) of the 83 million requested by the Ministry of the Environment for this year.

At its creation in November 1994, the ministry received a budget appropriation amounting to 15 million gourdes. This money largely paid salaries of those functionaries based in the capital and the costs of running the ministry in Port-au-Prince.

The freezing of negotiations with international aid donors increases the risk that financing will remain provisional, as 40 percent of the roughly five-billion dollar national budget depends on external financing.

In the meantime, the Ministry of the Environment will use education change people’s minds about the human environment: ‘’In this country the mentality of the people is deformed. Everything that is abnormal is accepted as normal,’’ says Winwight.

The ministry will also fight soil erosion, set up a rational management of garbage disposal and transform vacant urban lots, now covered with rubbish, into parks.

‘’All of this may seem tempting, but when we go more deeply into the question, we have to ask ourselves where they are going to find the 2,500 tonnes of garbage needed daily to fuel the generators, since the capital only produces 1,200 tonnes,’’ he added.

The Haitian capital indeed has a hard time handling the tonnes of waste it generates. Of the more than 1,000 tonnes of solid waste produced daily, only 25 percent is collected and treated for elimination in authorised discharge basins.

The absence of rigid controls on imported consumer products that damage the environment are also a cause for concern for Haitian environment officials, who have received several applications for authorisation to set up a factory for recycling aluminum cans and old cars and trucks.

Water management is one of priorities in the environmental reconstruction programme to be worked out during the first 100 days of Prime Minister Claudette Werleigh’s newly appointed government.

Some 82 percent of the wells supplying the capital with potable water have pronounced faecal pollution.

According to the environment minister, the mismanagement of water is one of the main contributors to the high cost of living, since water is a basic resource used in the catering business, in laundries and for soft drinks, which are consumed on a large scale by poorer citizens at meal times in lieu of wine.

Yet scenes of water being squandered can be seen every day throughout the country. One engineer told IPS that at Chaudeau, a catchment dam six Kms southwest of the capital, broken taps on all of the public fountains within a radius of two Kms run day and night, as they have for the past seven years, causing the loss of several thousand litres of water daily, an amount estimated to be enough to meet the requirements of some 200 people.

The investment needed to repair these taps would be approximately eight to ten dollars per tap. In comparison, the 9,500 litres of water being lost each day would cost between 25 and 35 dollars if charged by private suppliers in Port-au-Prince.

The more the Minister of the Environment becomes familiar with these problems, the more he realises that his ministry simply does not have the means to try and solve them.

Immediate or long-term action on environmental problems costs money, but the Haitian government does not have the funds to dedicate to resolving these issues, so has put them on the back burner..

But Minister Winwight has reason to wonder how viable the reconstruction programme’s water management goals can be if the national government cannot even give him the necessary funds to open up local branches of his ministry in the country’s various

In fact, the government has only appropriated a total of 19 million gourdes (one million dollars) of the 83 million requested by the Ministry of the Environment for this year.

At its creation in November 1994, the ministry received a budget appropriation amounting to 15 million gourdes. This money largely served to meet the salaries of those functionaries based in the capital and the costs of running the ministry in Port-au- Prince itself.

The freezing of negotiations with international aid donors increases the risk that financing will remain provisional, as 40 percent of the roughly five-billion dollar national budget depends on external financing.

In the meantime, the Ministry of the Environment will use education to change people’s thinking on the importance of the human environment: ‘’In this country the mentality of the people is deformed. Everything that is abnormal is accepted as normal,’’ says Winwight.

The ministry also wants to fight soil erosion, set up a rational management of garbage disposal and transform vacant urban lots, now covered with rubbish, into parks and playgrounds. (END/IPS/IMC/BL/95)

Origin: Rome/HAITI/ ----

[c] 1995, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS) All rights reserved

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