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<TABLE class=storycontent cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0><TBODY><TR><TD colSpan=2>Bill Clinton pledges to improve Haiti aid distribution
Page last updated at 04:28 GMT, Saturday, 6 February 2010
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Mr Clinton pledged to try and improve the way aid is co-ordinated
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IIMA --><!-- S SF -->Haiti faces a massive task helping those who lost homes and livelihoods in the recent earthquake, former US President Bill Clinton has admitted.
Excerpts:
Named by the UN as international aid co-ordinator, Mr Clinton was visiting Haiti's damaged capital Port-au-Prince.
There were protests as he met Haiti's president, after which Mr Clinton vowed to speed up sluggish aid deliveries.
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Tents and trucks
Visiting Port-au-Prince, Mr Clinton apologised for the delay in delivering and co-ordinating relief efforts.
"I'm sorry it's taken this long but these people are working hard and what I'm trying to do now is to identify the things that aren't being done and need to be speeded up and fill those blanks. I'm doing the best I can," he said.
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According to the UN, many people are living near the rubble of their homes and some half a million are packed into some 315 makeshift camps which have sprung up around the city.
Mr Clinton said a supply of several thousand new tents would arrive in the next few days to help some of those still sleeping on the streets, along with a hundred lorries to help distribute more aid.
He said he would be looking at the structure of the aid operation to see how it could be made to function in a more effective way.
"Part of it is just shipping the volume of food in here that is necessary," he said, adding that there was also a considerable distance between the 16 main food distribution centres in the country.
On Friday, a crowd of Haitians took several tonnes of food and water from a lorry near the capital's airport and, in a separate incident, eight lorry-loads of food and water were raided in a nearby in an industrial park.
Damaged structures
Mr Clinton said that both the Haitian authorities and the international community based in the country had suffered significant losses, hampering them in their attempts to co-ordinate international relief.
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"All the ministers, thank God, survived, but they lost a lot of their family members and they lost a lot their senior aides," he said of the Haitian government, adding that the UN had faced its largest loss of life in the organisation's history.
"So the structure that would respond to this ordinarily was terribly damaged," he said.
He said he hoped that the capital that would emerge from the ruins of the city might be improved, with a better health service.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8501660.stm
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Page last updated at 04:28 GMT, Saturday, 6 February 2010
</TD></TR><TR><TD class=storybody><!-- S BO --><!-- S IIMA --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=226 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IIMA --><!-- S SF -->Haiti faces a massive task helping those who lost homes and livelihoods in the recent earthquake, former US President Bill Clinton has admitted.
Excerpts:
Named by the UN as international aid co-ordinator, Mr Clinton was visiting Haiti's damaged capital Port-au-Prince.
There were protests as he met Haiti's president, after which Mr Clinton vowed to speed up sluggish aid deliveries.
-----------------
Tents and trucks
Visiting Port-au-Prince, Mr Clinton apologised for the delay in delivering and co-ordinating relief efforts.
"I'm sorry it's taken this long but these people are working hard and what I'm trying to do now is to identify the things that aren't being done and need to be speeded up and fill those blanks. I'm doing the best I can," he said.
<!-- S IBOX --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=231 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=5>
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IBOX -->
According to the UN, many people are living near the rubble of their homes and some half a million are packed into some 315 makeshift camps which have sprung up around the city.
Mr Clinton said a supply of several thousand new tents would arrive in the next few days to help some of those still sleeping on the streets, along with a hundred lorries to help distribute more aid.
He said he would be looking at the structure of the aid operation to see how it could be made to function in a more effective way.
"Part of it is just shipping the volume of food in here that is necessary," he said, adding that there was also a considerable distance between the 16 main food distribution centres in the country.
On Friday, a crowd of Haitians took several tonnes of food and water from a lorry near the capital's airport and, in a separate incident, eight lorry-loads of food and water were raided in a nearby in an industrial park.
Damaged structures
Mr Clinton said that both the Haitian authorities and the international community based in the country had suffered significant losses, hampering them in their attempts to co-ordinate international relief.
<!-- S IBOX --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=231 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=5>
<!-- E ILIN -->
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IBOX -->
"All the ministers, thank God, survived, but they lost a lot of their family members and they lost a lot their senior aides," he said of the Haitian government, adding that the UN had faced its largest loss of life in the organisation's history.
"So the structure that would respond to this ordinarily was terribly damaged," he said.
He said he hoped that the capital that would emerge from the ruins of the city might be improved, with a better health service.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8501660.stm
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