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Breaking News in the Project Management World
Friday, February 05, 2010
Shelter is Next Big Emergency Program Need in Haiti
According to the United Nations (UN), hundreds of thousands of Haitian earthquake victims displaced from their homes in Port-au-Prince, Léogâne and Jacmel urgently need shelter. Plastic sheeting is taking priority over tents, the United Nations reported on 2 February in its latest update three weeks after the catastrophe struck the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
Sanitation, which was already a challenge in Haiti prior to the devastating 12 January quake, which killed up to 200,000 people, injured many others and left 2 million in need of aid, is also a great challenge now.
Due to the need to ensure that crops are harvested from the August-October planting season, farmers are not able to migrate to temporary sites or shelter points and many therefore are not being counted in needs assessments and have not received assistance. A UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) aerial assessment of the Grand Goâve and Léogâne areas found that 20 to 60 per cent of farmhouses were also destroyed.
Provision of shelter materials other than plastic sheeting is not feasible in most spontaneous camps due to the density of the sites and lack of relocation space in the vicinity. Plastic sheeting is therefore being prioritized over tents, with the full endorsement of the Government, to ensure that shelters will last during the rainy season and beyond. UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Haiti Kim Bolduc said 200,000 tents would be needed for the rainy season in three months' time. Shelter support will be incrementally upgraded to transitional shelter and eventually be replaced by construction of permanent housing, OCHA said.
Editor's note: Whether plastic sheeting and tents today or affordable housing in the future, projects to deliver shelter, housing and building construction will be needed for many years in Haiti. Some officials are talking about the opportunity to implement building standards, better construction methods and more reliable housing during the reconstruction of this poor country. Shelter is a basic human need in every society, and especially among the one billion around the world living in poverty. In our opinion, this is a future growth area for programs, projects and project management. If you have opinions, stories or articles about managing projects in the housing sector, please send them to editor@pmforum.org so we can share them with the rest of the PM world.
Due to the need to ensure that crops are harvested from the August-October planting season, farmers are not able to migrate to temporary sites or shelter points and many therefore are not being counted in needs assessments and have not received assistance. A UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) aerial assessment of the Grand Goâve and Léogâne areas found that 20 to 60 per cent of farmhouses were also destroyed.
Provision of shelter materials other than plastic sheeting is not feasible in most spontaneous camps due to the density of the sites and lack of relocation space in the vicinity. Plastic sheeting is therefore being prioritized over tents, with the full endorsement of the Government, to ensure that shelters will last during the rainy season and beyond. UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Haiti Kim Bolduc said 200,000 tents would be needed for the rainy season in three months' time. Shelter support will be incrementally upgraded to transitional shelter and eventually be replaced by construction of permanent housing, OCHA said.
Editor's note: Whether plastic sheeting and tents today or affordable housing in the future, projects to deliver shelter, housing and building construction will be needed for many years in Haiti. Some officials are talking about the opportunity to implement building standards, better construction methods and more reliable housing during the reconstruction of this poor country. Shelter is a basic human need in every society, and especially among the one billion around the world living in poverty. In our opinion, this is a future growth area for programs, projects and project management. If you have opinions, stories or articles about managing projects in the housing sector, please send them to editor@pmforum.org so we can share them with the rest of the PM world.