Khamal Georges
Even as international aid continues to mount for disaster-stricken Haiti, hopelessness and desperation are settling over affected communities.
It’s in the eyes of the children who haven’t had a meal in days. It’s in the desperate voices of parents begging for food, clothes and help.
On Sunday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon pledged more support to the people of Haiti.
“We are going to mobilise as many resources and as much medical support as we can to first of all stop the cholera epidemic and second support the families of the victims,” he said.
On Monday, the ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum sent 90 tonnes of emergency supplies in his Boeing 747 to the Caribbean island in the wake of Hurricane Matthew.
But as relief efforts ramped up, Pastor Lukensen Pierre Louis says people were growing more and more desperate because it was not reaching the people most in need.
“They have no one to take care of them, so anyone who passes they try to beg,” Louis says.
He is a leader in the Leogane community, and says the devastation caused by Hurricane Matthew was sucking the resilience of the Haitian people, especially those still recovering from the 2010 earthquake.
“I hope you are going to spread the news so the other people in the world can see the situation. I am hopeless, I have no one who can take care of me and my family,” Aurelio Carillo told Guardian Media Limited outside his one-bedroom home that was filled with mud from the floods.
The evidence of the 2010 earthquake still remains in his yard as a bitter reminder of how difficult it was to access aid back then. Six years later, he says it’s like déjà vu.
Throughout small communities in Haiti’s southern regions, tens of thousands are not receiving aid.
It’s why the group ITNAC says it liaises with its partners to ensure that food and medicine get into those neglected communities.
The group is in the process of shipping a container to Haiti. Other local groups are also preparing containers to ship to the Caribbean nation in the coming week.
All of Standard Distributors’ locations will be used as points for Guardian Media Limited’s collection drive.
As the people of Haiti wait on the aid to arrive, some fear time is running out.
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Guardian Media has partnered with ITNAC and is encouraging citizens to donate relief items to this group which has been involved in a range of humanitarian and developmental projects since 2003. Among the priority items needed are children’s clothes, non-perishable food, over the counter medication, baby supplies, bedsheets, towels and shoes. The items can be dropped off at Sa Maison Guest House, 6A Anderson Street, St James. Cash donations can be made to ITNAC’s accounts at First Citizens 1660410 or Republic Bank at 510009446802.