Haiti, food aid still falls short

The newly homeless of the rubble-strewn Bizoton slum say they haven't gotten food, water or help with shelter in the two weeks since the earthquake.

“If it rains now, that's it,” Wilson St. Ellis, 50, a father of eight, said Wednesday amid plastic sheets stretched here and there as flimsy shields against the elements.

Where donated rice, beans or ready-to-eat meals are being distributed, crowds quickly become unruly, with young men pushing ahead and grabbing food bags from women and the weak. U.N. peacekeepers fire pepper spray and Haitian police swing sticks to restore control.

“These people are just hungry,” U.N. spokesman Vincenzo Pugliese said of the thousands thronging food distribution points, where he said U.N. peacekeepers were reinforcing security.

Food remains scarce for many of the neediest survivors despite the efforts of the United Nations, the U.S. military and dozens of international aid groups. Relief experts say the scale of this disaster and Haiti's poor infrastructure are presenting unprecedented challenges, but Haitian leaders complain coordination has been poor.

“Many mistakes have to be rectified in order to bring help to the people who need it,” President Rene Preval complained to reporters.

In a bid to improve food distribution, representatives of the U.N., the U.S., the Haitian government and private aid groups met Wednesday, and afterward Donal Reilly of Catholic Relief Services said they decided to divide Port-au-Prince into zones, designating a major aid agency to be responsible for delivering U.N. food to each sector.

On food aid, the U.N. World Food Program (WFP), which says it has reached 450,000 people, urgently appealed to governments for more cash for Haiti supplies — US$800 million to feed 2 million people through December, more than quadruple the US$196 million already pledged.

The food agency says rising tensions and security incidents — “including people rushing distribution points for food” — have hampered deliveries. But since the massive relief effort's first days, other problems have also delayed aid — blocked and congested roads, shortages of trucks, a crippled seaport and an overloaded Port-au-Prince airport.

“The unblocking of the logistical bottlenecks is an absolute priority,” the European Commission said Wednesday, describing a seven-day backlog of 1,000 relief flights seeking permission to land at the single-runway airport.

The senior U.S. officer in Haiti said Haitian families simply cannot rely on any particular location for rations.

Food is “flooding” into the city, Lt. Gen. Ken Keen told reporters, “but it's being delivered pretty much in terms of where we can get to and where we can distribute it,” not always in locations that are “sustained every day.”

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