Reconstruction Money Flushed Away?

Port-au-Prince, March 8 - Waste.

Millions spent by the international community to empty over 11,000 "port-a-potties" has now dried up, leaving a half-million internally displaced people with no place to "go," literally.

Online, it looks like two US-based charities are making good on their promise to build 10,000 homes, and the money flows in… but not to build 10,000 houses – journalists could only find a few dozen.

Earthquake refugees dump the ecological free toilets supplied by an Irish aid agency and instead dig to install familiar flush toilets which are now polluting one of the capital’s main water supplies.

These are just a few of the investigative reports produced this month by young Haitian journalists, with support from the new Fund For Investigative Journalism in Haiti.

Chosen by a jury made up of media directors from Groupe Medialternatif, the National Association of Haitian Media (ANMH) and the Association of Independent Haitian Media (AMIH), a dozen young men and women scoured the streets and hillsides of Haiti's earthquake zone for two months, discovering a lack of coordination, buck-passing, waste and corruption.

Haiti Grassroots Watch is proud to have sponsored four of the investigations. Here are two, one from HGW and one from Le Nouvelliste.

Read :

Temporary Toilets Threaten Permanent Damage

and

Money for Cleaning Toilets Down the Drain? (from Le Nouvelliste)

Watch Grace Village, a camp without Grace

Learn more about the Fund for Investigative Journalism in Haiti