Thursday, March 06, 2008

In Haiti, people starve while food rots


There is so much red tape in Haiti's customs that food actually rots in the ports, never reaching the people. Many charity groups donate tons of food, but after sitting for months waiting to be processed, it is no longer suitable to be eaten and is eventually thrown away or burned. The problem is that Haiti has been a transfer point in cocaine trade due to its corrupt customs. So now that they are trying to reform this, it's getting to an extreme level of bureaucracy and food is trapped in storage while people starve. Isn't this outrageous?
Caption for the picture: "A man puts rotting pinto beans in a bucket to throw away in a private yard inside the port of Cap-Haitien, Haiti, Saturday, Feb. 16, 2008. An Associated Press investigation found the situation is most severe at the port in Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city. One recent afternoon, garbage men shoveled a pile of rotting pinto beans that had turned gray or crumbled to dust as cockroaches and beetles scurried about. The men had found the putrid cargo by following a stench through stacked shipping containers to one holding 40,000 pounds of beans. It had been in port since November.(AP Photo/Evens Sanon) "

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