Port-au-Prince: Haiti`s Premier begged foreign donors to back the reconstruction of his quake-hit country as fresh looting and chaotic food hand-outs underscored the grim conditions facing survivors.
Nearly two weeks after the disaster, which killed around 150,000 people and left a million homeless, international powers meeting in Montreal heard that it would take at least a decade to rebuild the stricken Caribbean nation.
Haitian police shot two people in the head as scavengers plundered the debris in the ruined heart of Port-au-Prince, while thousands more people joined a mass exodus from squalid tent camps in the capital.
"The country is ravaged, I ask myself how it can be rebuilt after this catastrophe. The Haitian government is very corrupt," said Gesnel Faustin, 29, living in a tent outside Haiti`s destroyed presidential palace.
In Montreal, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said the world must map out a long-term strategy for the Americas` poorest country, after meeting immediate needs for food, water, shelter and health care.
"I just want to say that the people of Haiti will need to be helped to face this colossal work of reconstruction," Bellerive told world officials including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned of a long path ahead to rebuild Haiti and urged the world to hash out a "coordinated" plan for the ill-starred country.
"It was not an exaggeration to say that at least 10 years of hard work awaits the world in Haiti," Harper said.
Donor countries had agreed to hold a full conference on aid to Haiti at the UN headquarters in New York in March, Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said.
Haiti`s President Rene Preval, in a statement from Port-au-Prince, urged the world to urgently airlift a further 200,000 tents and 36 million ready-to-eat ration packs before the country`s rainy season starts in May.
The US plans to create thousands of jobs in Haiti by hiring people to help with the cleanup following the earthquake earlier this month, a US official said on Monday.
The US State Department`s coordinator for relief and reconstruction, Lewis Lucke, said creating the jobs is critical for pumping money into the economy as part of the recovery effort. The US government is aiming to create 20,000 jobs by the end of January.
"Job creation has to be part of any recovery plan," he said.
The United States is playing a lead role in the massive international relief operation mobilized after the 7.0 magnitude quake on January 12. At least 112,000 people are confirmed dead and that number is expected to climb.
The earthquake tore through Port-au-Prince, essentially turning the capital into a pile of rubble. Lucke said the US has already begun the process of hiring people to help clear the streets and clean up what were once buildings.
Lucke said this effort will increase as the mission transits from rescue to recovery and helping the Haitian economy.
"We`re moving as fast as we can," Lucke said.
The US has deployed a large presence at Port-au-Prince airport to move in relief supplies, and ships centred around the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson off the coast of the Caribbean island.
Lieutenant General Ken Keen, the commander of the joint US military operation, said the United States will have a lengthy role in helping Haiti get through this, but would not say how long the military will stay.
"We will be here for as long as needed," Keen said.
Meanwhile, the State Department said Monday the US has evacuated more than 360 Haitian orphans and is working through adoption centres to re-settle them in the country.
Spokesman PJ Crowley said it expects that number to climb by 200 in the coming days on top of the 363 already taken out.
The US government was working with adoption centres to find them new homes, he said.
Chavez writes off Haiti`s oil debt
President Hugo Chavez has announced that he will write off the undisclosed sum Haiti owes Venezuela for oil as part of a regional bloc`s plans to help the impoverished Caribbean nation.
"Haiti has no debt with Venezuela, just the opposite: Venezuela has a historical debt with that nation, with that people for whom we feel not pity but rather admiration, and we share their faith, their hope," Chavez said after the extraordinary meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, or ALBA.
He also announced that ALBA has decided on a comprehensive plan that includes an immediate donation of USD 20 million to Haiti`s health sector, and a fund that, Chavez said, will be at least USD 100 million "for starters".
Oil-rich Venezuela is the economic heart of ALBA, which also includes Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Haiti is among several countries that send observers to ALBA meetings.
(With Agencies` inputs)
