Last week Heraldo Muñoz, Regional Director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), visited several sites of projects around Port-au-Prince to take note of the progress achieved and and consider the potentiality of future projects for a new Haiti.

To Morne à Tuff, commercial area of the downtown where takes place a demolition operation of buildings classified red (damaged and uninhabitable). The Regional Director was able to measure the difficulty of access to certain parts of the city and the proximity of businesses and residents of the demolition site.

The visit continued to St Gérard where the project partners have set up a workshop of production of concrete materials whose characteristic is to use the debris as raw material. Heraldo Muñoz observed the different techniques was able to developed to produce blocks and tiles as well as aggregates such as sand and gravel. This workshop also plans to provide training on production techniques of materials on the basics of management and creation of micro enterprises.

"I am proud to see that this project, which brings together local authorities, residents of neighborhoods and NGOs allow to strengthen the technical capacity of micro enterprises, to encourage the creation of encourage the creation of employment generating activities while removing 4 million cubic meters from the streets of Port-au-Prince, keeping the Haitians and their communities at the center of reconstruction efforts."

The mission of Mr. Munoz ended with a meeting with the President Michel Martelly. The two men have discussed, among other thing of the importance of reconstruction, of strengthening of the rule of law and of the support to the capacity building of the state. Muñoz declared "The government's commitments to achieve specific goal and to initiate concrete reforms should result to a determined international support, both politically and financially [...] the UNDP, the United Nations and the international cooperation can not be and have never been the motor of development of a country. The international community, however, can be a catalyst for the efforts of the Haitian people.

HL/ HaitiLibre