Haiti - Reconstruction : Demolition operation in Morne l'Hôpital
Joseph Ronald Toussaint, the Minister of Environment on a visit to Morne l'Hôpital explained the need to destroy 450 homes, within the program "Saving the lives Morne l'Hôpital". Ultimately 3.288 houses will suffer the same fate. The demolition is expected to begin next month.
"[...] On the issue of houses to be demolished, it is necessary to differentiate, there are houses that are between the gullies, there are old houses and also new construction, there are different treatment according to the case. Homes that are in the drainage lines, in gullies, can not stay [...] a decision must be made with local authorities [...] it's not only the Ministry of Environment [...]
...after evaluation, we found that for the Morne l'Hôpital, there are 3.288 houses to be relocated. We are in the first phase, [...] in the emergency phase which is in two stages. In a first estimate, we saw that there were about 450 houses on 3.288 that must be destroyed before be able to treat the ravines, the skirts of the hills. This is an area to be reforested to prevent a large volume of water come down [and prevent the risk of flooding]. We also plan to make retention dams in gullies, this is something that comes after the first demolitions. We'll do the demolitions in Peace, because the government is not against the people. [...]
We have the ambition with the operation "Saving the lives of Morne l'Hôpital" to create 2.200 jobs, this is not the only the aspect of demolishing houses and compensate the people, we want to create jobs, generate income [...] we'll start with the axis Jalousie - Carrefour Feuilles, then we will do the axis Carrefour Feuilles - Marianie and finally the axis Tête Pélerin - Pernier [...]"
