Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Al­though T&T has agreed to of­fer more as­sis­tance to Haiti, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning said cau­tion was raised against vis­it­ing the earth­quake-dev­as­tat­ed coun­try. Man­ning es­ti­mat­ed about US$2 bil­lion would be re­quired each year to re­ha­bil­i­tate and re­con­struct Haiti. He said the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) de­ter­mined it would best en­gaged aid to Haiti through the con­struc­tion of a field hos­pi­tal in Haiti with "all that was re­quired to man it." Man­ning was speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence last night at the South Ter­mi­nal of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on his re­turn from a meet­ing of world lead­ers in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic ear­li­er in the day. He said T&T would con­tribute to the ma­te­ri­al­i­sa­tion of the hos­pi­tal in Haiti af­ter pro­pos­als for the in­sti­tu­tion were brought for­ward.

He added T&T would make an­oth­er fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tion to Haiti through a de­vel­op­ment fund pro­posed for the im­pov­er­ished coun­try at the clos­ing ses­sion of the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as last year in Port-of-Spain. Ac­cord­ing to Man­ning, the fund was mod­i­fied yes­ter­day to in­vite all coun­tries, as well as in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies, to make do­na­tions. He said: "We were all com­mit­ted to mak­ing what­ev­er ef­fort was nec­es­sary to re­ha­bil­i­tate Haiti. "In these cir­cum­stances, it is Haiti to­day. It could have been Trinidad and To­ba­go or it might be Trinidad and To­ba­go to­mor­row... in cir­cum­stances such as these we have to be our broth­ers' keep­er."

He said the de­ploy­ment of Hait­ian refugees to oth­er Caribbean coun­tries would be avoid­ed and that the two ma­jor con­cerns were the need for co-or­di­na­tion of the in­ter­na­tion­al ef­fort for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and re­con­struc­tion of Haiti and the need to co-or­di­nate re­lief and res­cue ef­forts on the ground in Haiti. Man­ning said: "Steps are be­ing tak­en to put it in place but they were dis­cour­ag­ing peo­ple go­ing to Haiti and in the event that you did that, and you were able to get in­to Haiti, it was clear­ly sug­gest­ed that you be self-suf­fi­cient: that is to say that you bring every­thing that you re­quire: food, wa­ter, trans­porta­tion; every­thing that you re­quire, you have to bring.

"If you do not, then you are mak­ing a call on scarce re­sources that were iden­ti­fied for the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple of Haiti. "That is the rea­son why ini­tial­ly I did not leave Trinidad and To­ba­go. I did not at­tempt to go any­where. I un­der­stood that sit­u­a­tion very well. It is not the first time I have seen nat­ur­al dis­as­ters around the world." Man­ning stressed that dis­cus­sions among yes­ter­day's meet­ing of lead­ers not­ed that Haitians had to spear­head the ben­e­fits that were be­ing giv­en to them. "No­body was go­ing to Haiti to im­pose any­thing on the Hait­ian Gov­ern­ment and/or the Hait­ian peo­ple but the Hait­ian Gov­ern­ment and the Hait­ian peo­ple must be in­ti­mate­ly in­volved in all that is de­signed for their ben­e­fit," Man­ning said. He added that T&T pro­posed that debt-for­give­ness was an idea tak­en up and in­clud­ed in the San­to Domin­go de­c­la­ra­tion, which was the out­come of yes­ter­day's meet­ing.