Haitians look for jobs after quake (Feature)

By Andrea Sosa Cabrios Jan 30, 2010, 1:16 GMT

Port-au-Prince - 'Won't you have a job for me?'

That is one of the most asked questions these days in Port-au- Prince, more than two weeks after a quake devastated the city, destroying not only lives and buildings but also jobs.

In hotels, anyone with a car will offer to play taxi driver. And there are people who will run off to look for whatever available car they can find for their 'clients,' in exchange for a tip. It does not matter if the car barely drives.

Many Haitians have been left jobless by a quake that demolished thousands of homes and claimed the lives of up to 200,000 people.

While awaiting the economic rebound that they hope will come from rebuilding Port-au-Prince on a large scale, Haitians improvise small businesses.

At the camp on 33 Delmas Street, there are women who cook spaghetti with sausages, a tent of sticks and sheets houses a small barber shop, and people are already selling products that reached the Caribbean country as humanitarian aid, even though such activity is illegal.

About 236,000 people have migrated out of the Port-au-Prince to other parts of Haiti in the aftermath of the quake, but 900,000 to 1.1 million people remain homeless within the city, according to the United Nations.

'I speak English and a little Spanish. Won't you have a job for me?' asks Gulaine Gustamar, 37, who is staying at an improvised camp in the Haitian capital.

In Cite Soleil, an impoverished neighbourhood even before the quake, English-speaking kids who proudly define themselves as 'students' offer to work as guides or translators. They vow to turn up in their best shirts if they are hired.

Other businesses, however, have been flourishing since the quake.

Every day there are long lines outside the long-distance bus company Caribe Tours to buy tickets to Santo Domingo, in the neighbouring, relatively more prosperous Dominican Republic.

All hotel rooms in Port-au-Prince are booked, and construction workers know that they could soon be very busy.

Most people, though, have no way to make a living.

Some are starting to benefit from the Cash for Work initiative of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and they can already be seen working on the streets.

This temporary employment programme was launched in Haiti on January 20 and already occupies 11,000 people across seven districts of Port-au-Prince. They receive 150 gourdes (about 4 dollars) per day, to which the UNDP wishes to add a food ration worth at least 200 gourdes (5.40 dollars).

People are only hired in the programme for a two-week increment, so that more people can participate and benefit from it.

In the initial phase, participants in the initiative are busy removing rubble from the streets, picking up rubbish, erecting tents and helping with other community tasks. The programme will eventually turn to reconstruction and training, the UNDP said.

As is often the case with such programmes, women who head households have priority. Next come men who are primary breadwinners and people who have lost their homes or have lost a relative in the quake.

Supermarkets, camps and street markets in Puerto Prince all have fruit and other foodstuffs for sale. But that revival of commerce does no good for people who have lost what little they had and have no cash.

Savings and remittances from abroad are a lifeline for some, but those without such advantages can only hope for a job.