Haiti needs $900 million to improve sanitation, potable water
PORT-AU-PRINCE (EFE).- The head of Haiti’s Water Supply and Sanitation Directorate, or Dinepa, said Tuesday that the country needs as much at $900 million to build infrastructure to improve potable water and sewage services in the capital.
Access to clean water is a big problem in the impoverished country and much of its infrastructure is obsolete or has been vandalized, but even so Dinepa chief Benito Dumay said that he is “very happy” with the advances being made in the area.
“We’re going in a good direction. Although we need more funds, I’m very pleased with the technical assistance we’re receiving from the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and the Inter-American Development Bank,” Dumay emphasized.
Police make arrests in connection with murder of three disabled people, four cops
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CMC) – The National Police of Haiti (PNH) says law enforcement officials have arrested 35 people, including five for the murder of four police officers, and three for lynching three disabled women last week.
PNH deputy spokesman and the principal inspector, Garry Desrosiers, said the 35 individuals arrested are accused of various crimes including: criminal conspiracy, murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, and kidnapping simulation and rape.
Desrosiers said that the PNH had been actively investigating the murders and that three members of a gang were arrested during the police sweep for allegedly murdering police agents Jean Ralph Coq and Johnson Jean Pierre in April and November last year.
Desrosiers said that three people were arrested in Cabaret in connection with the murder of the three women last week and that other suspects were being sought.
Hundreds of people took to the streets last Friday to protest the murder of the three disabled women.
Leaked UN report faults sanitation at Haiti bases at time of cholera outbreak
The United Nations uncovered serious sanitation failures in its Haiti peacekeeping mission just a month after a deadly cholera outbreak erupted in the country, killing thousands, a leaked report has revealed, the Guardian reports.
The authors of the review alerted the UN leadership that the failure to dispose of sewage safely at a time when the cholera epidemic was raging “will potentially damage the reputation of the mission.”
They also warned that the way the UN stabilisation mission in Haiti (Minustah) had managed waste disposal “and the poor oversight of contractors carrying out this work has left the mission vulnerable to allegations of disease propagation and environmental contamination.”