Protests, frustration at Haiti aid bottlenecks

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The aid flooding into Haiti by plane and boat is not reaching earthquake victims quickly enough due to red tape, security fears, transportation bottlenecks and occasional corruption.

Anger boiled into a protest Wednesday by hundreds of hungry people who jogged down a broad avenue in a Port-au-Prince suburb waving branches and chanting, "They stole the rice! They stole the rice!" Protesters alleged local officials were charging them for donated food.

Many foreign aid workers and Haitians say ample donations are arriving, but express frustration at the slow pace of distribution of food and medicine from Port-au-Prince's port, airport and a warehouse in its sprawling Cite-Soleil slum.

"There's no top-down leadership. ... And since the Haitian government took control of our supplies, we have to wait for things even though they're stacked up in the warehouse," said Dr. Rob Maddox of Start, Louisiana, tending to dozens of patients in the capital's general hospital. "The situation is just madness."

U.S. air traffic controllers have lined up an astonishing 2,550 incoming flights through March 1, but some 25 flights a day aren't taking their slots. Communication breakdowns between Haitians and their foreign counterparts are endemic.

"Aid is bottlenecking at the Port-au-Prince airport. It's not getting into the field," said Mike O'Keefe, who runs Banyan Air Service in Fort Lauderdale.

Haitians complain that corrupt officials have started to manipulate some of the aid that reaches the streets.

Danka Tanzil, 17, said a local official in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville was demanding a bribe before he would give people the coupons that entitle them to bags of rice from the U.N. World Food Program. "For us to get the coupon, we must give 50 Haitian dollars (US$7) so we can get the rice," she complained.

Boxes of supplies are stacked to the ceiling in the dimly lit warehouse of the capital's hospital. In another storage area, medicine, bandages and other key supplies pile up on tables — watched over by a Haitian health worker who scrawls in a notebook, ticking off everything that comes in and out. Doctors say since locals took over the supply room, crucial time to save lives has been lost filling out unnecessary forms.

Donors talk about key logistical challenges: Grappling with a barely functioning government, the backlog of flights, a damaged and small port, clogged overland routes from outlying airports and the Dominican Republic, and security.