Mayor Builds Palace Among Haiti Rubble

More Than 1 Million Remain Homeless in Haiti Six Months After the Quake
WPLG Local 10, Miami
July 12, 2010

[Le magistrat de Delmas (Port-au-Prince, Haiti) y construit une mansion alors que la zone pullule de milliers de sans-abri frappés par le séisme du 12 janvier 2010. Pour en voir plus, cliquez en bas.]

http://www.justnews.com/video/24230298/index.html

DELMAS, Haiti -- Among the cracked roads and broken-down lives of the Haitian city of Delmas rises a palace.

There, the emerald lawn is cut by hand. Walls are constructed with hand-laid limestone. Floors are lined with imported marble. The palace even features an amphitheater. When construction is done, the building will be the new city hall and the part-time residence of the mayor.

"This is our response to what happened," Delmas Mayor Wilson Jeudy told Local 10's Jonathan Vigliotti. "The state has to be well represented. It has to be royal."

Jeudy said the last city hall was undamaged by the January's 7.0-magnitude quake. Still, he built the new edifice as the people who elected him into office fought for their lives on the streets.

"In order for us to respond, we need a city hall like this one," he said.

According to Jeudy, when the doors open full-time later this year, it will function as a place to host visitors.

"It's beautiful. Did you see the floors?" said Miami-Dade County Commissioner Audrey Edmonson.

On Friday, Edmonson and other Miami-Dade County officials visited Delmas to announce their donation of fire trucks and ambulances. The county also will fly Haitian citizens to Miami for training.

The group gathered in one of the palace's unfinished rooms, where a Haitian man modeled new fire equipment brought over from Miami.

Following the ceremony, commissioners took a tour of how the other side lives in the western hemisphere's poorest country.

"The palace we just left was very grandiose. When you come down here where the people are, it just looks like there has been no movement," said Commissioner Dorrin Rolle.

Life is much different on the other side of city hall's gates. It has been six months since the quake first hit and still an estimated 25 million cubic yards of debris remain. Officials said it could take more than five years to remove the rubble. Only 10,000 of an estimated 1.2 million people have been found housing, and 1,300 new tent cities dot Haiti.

Ironically, critics said the delay in cleanup and rebuilding stems from the United Nations' close oversight of the distribution of funds.

For every dollar donated of the $1.2 billion so far, 99 percent goes directly to aid organizations. Only about 2 percent has been released. The remaining 1 percent, or about $10 million, has gone to the Haitian government.

"How much does this palace cost?" Vigliotti asked Jeudy.

"I cannot tell you how much it is because we're still under construction," he said.

While the price tag is unknown, Jeudy said American cities personally wrote him checks for $150,000.

"We're going to have to talk about this," Edmonson said.

"If you're not moving the people and making a better quality of life for them, then to us, on our side, it looks like nothing has been done. Nothing is being done," Rolle said.

As rebuilding continues, donors said breaking down the walls between the wealthy and those who are barely getting by is important to Haiti's recovery.

After seeing Local 10's story online Monday, a representative from Jeudy's office called to correct a statement. Now, the mayor's office says donations are not being used for the construction. Instead, Jeudy's office said, Haitian taxpayer dollars are being used.

The representative said that following the earthquake, the property was used for patients injured in the quake. The patients moved out as construction continued.

Since the people of Haiti are paying for the construction, according to the mayor's office, Vigliotti asked if the mayor's office would open its gates and allow people who are sleeping in the streets to set up tents on the lawn. The representative said the office would get back to Local 10.

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