Haiti’s port sector comes under fire as it remains crippled

@BR Ednote:Editor’s note: Part of a series examining the challenges and opportunities in Haiti’s reconstruction, six months after the devastating earthquake.

By JACQUELINE CHARLES

jcharles@MiamiHerald.com

PORT-AU-PRINCE — The day the ground buckled, a $3.2 million crane crashed into the water off this country’s main seaport, the pier crumbled and cracked containers spilled into the sea.

Six months later, the crane and containers remain in the water and two floating barges have temporarily replaced the pier.

The Port-au-Prince seaport, a main economic driver of Haiti’s economy, is critical to the country’s recovery from the worst natural disaster in the Western Hemisphere. But six months since the Jan. 12 catastrophic earthquake, the facility remains crippled.

The international community and aid groups complain bitterly that Haiti’s government has failed to present a master plan to revive the port sector — criticized as a pocket of government neglect, cronyism and fierce rivalries even before the disaster.

“The port is a broken asset,” said Adrian van der Knaap, head of operations for World Food Program Haiti, one of the largest users of Haiti’s ports. “The island needs well-functioning ports. It can be much, much better than it is now.”

Samuel Perez, the one-time U.S. military commander of the Joint Task Force Port Opening in Haiti, was more blunt.

“The Haitian government has to come to grips with how they are going to reconstruct that port,” said Perez, who spent three months here. “The port people are very, very satisfied with the fact they are making money hand over fist ... They are fleecing poor Haitians.”

Any long-term improvement in Haiti’s economy depends on both repairing and reforming the country’s ports system, including its underused and neglected ports.

Tackling the ports and their entire supply chain, could be the litmus test for a 31-member reconstruction commission chaired by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

“A lot of issues are going to come on the table as a real condition to invest in Haiti and the port is one of the first on the lists,” Bellerive told The Miami Herald. “I don’t see how we can dodge on that.”

But Bellerive’s government, like Haitian governments since the main seaport was constructed in the 1970s, has refused to provide transparent and clear rules on how port facilities should operate, critics say.

The port — located next to a sprawling seaside slum and congested downtown — has come to symbolize the Haitian government’s shortcomings:

Before the quake, the port was a cash cow, earning millions from a $310 wharfage tax on every 20-foot container brought into Haiti. But instead of investing the money in equipment and upgrades at all government ports, the money went to paying the salaries of hundreds of unnecessary and ghost employees, government officials said.