With friends like these who needs enemies...
January 12 is the fourth anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. In its aftermath the United States offered three billion dollars in aid for Haiti but less than one percent of the 1.3 billion dollars in obligated USAID funds – money designated specifically for Haitian recovery efforts – has gone directly to local Haitian groups. So if less than one percent of USAID funding has gone to Haitian groups, where has the rest of this money been directed? “ This information is nowhere to be found,” Vijaya Ramachandran, a senior fellow with the Centre for Global Development (CGD), a Washington think tank
“When so little of the funding reaches Haitians themselves, it takes them out of the decision-making process and ensures that aid programmes are not actually responsive to the needs of people on the ground,” Jake Johnson of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), another Washington think tank says. USAID gave seven of the 10 largest contracts for operations in Haiti to Chemonics International, a for-profit provider that Johnson says is the largest USAID contractor in the world. The public is unable to ascertain how Chemonics spent the vast majority of its multi-million-dollar contracts in Haiti due to USAID’s lack of oversight.
The USA sought to assist Haitian recovery efforts by strengthening the country’s garments industry. Following the earthquake, USAID partnered with the Clinton Foundation, the Inter-American Bank and Sae-A Trading, a Korean textile manufacturer, to construct the Caracol Industrial Park. Although the agency predicted that the complex would create up to 65,000 jobs, media reports suggest that as of last September the park had created fewer than 1,500 jobs.Furthermore, although the project’s financers gave hundreds of small-scale farmers 3,200 dollars each to vacate their land for the complex, 95 percent of that land today reportedly remains inactive.
Meanwhile, minimum wage will nudge up 12 percent on Jan. 1, from 4.65 to 5.23 dollars (or 200 to 225 gourdes) per day. Calculated hourly, it will go from 58 to 65 cents, before taxes. But the raise will not affect Haiti’s 30,000 assembly factory workers, who are supposed to already be receiving about seven dollars for an eight-hour day – about 87 cents per hour. Recent studies have found rampant wage theft at almost two dozen of the factories that stitch clothing for companies like Gap and Walmart. The wage increase comes almost five years after the Haitian parliament asked for a 200-gourde minimum wage, then worth 4.96 dollars a day, but failed to overcome Washington-backed industry opposition. The raise falls far short of the minimum wage of 11.63 dollars (500 gourdes) that factory worker unions and others were demanding. the Collective of Textile Factory Unions federation (KOSIT) which represents workers in three industrial parks, several reports and many economists agree that 225 gourdes, and even 300 gourdes, are not living wages. A 2011 study by the U.S.-based AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Centre held that a factory worker living in the capital and supporting two children would need to earn about 29 dollars per day (1,152 gourdes), six days a week, to support his or her family.
In November 2013 in the capital and in Haiti’s north, KOSIT, mobilised for the 500-gourde wage. The factory owners countered with an open letter which pled to “keep Haiti competitive” with what they identified as their “big rivals” – Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam, countries all known for harsh conditions and abuse. Because Haitian clothing imports into the United States are restricted based on a rule of origin, certain types of clothing imports over a certain quota must be produced using U.S. materials. These measures are designed to benefit the U.S. textile industry. The quotas and tariffs that the United States places on the Haitian apparel industry continue to inhibit trade-based economic growth.
The country’s 30,000 workers – almost two-thirds of them women – in Haiti’s free trade zone assembly factories stitch together clothing for Gap, Gildan Activewear, Hanes, Kohl’s, Levi’s, Russell, Target, VF, and Walmart. Haitian law stipulates that “the price paid per production unit… must be set in a way that permits a worker to earn at least 300 gourdes for an eight-hour day.” But recent studies by three different international groups, including the U.N.’s International Labour Organisation (ILO), have documented that the vast majority of workers receive the legal minimum only rarely: about 25 percent of the time, according to the ILO.In its October 2013 report, the ILO’s Better Work textile factory monitoring programme found all 23 factories surveyed to be “non-compliant” with the law. The US Workers Rights Consortium , based on worker interviews and pay stubs from five factories (four in the capital and SAE-A at the Caracol Industrial Park), found repeated cases of employers paying workers the incorrect amount for overtime hours. Workers were “being cheated of an average of seven weeks’ pay per year.
From here and here
January 12 is the fourth anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. In its aftermath the United States offered three billion dollars in aid for Haiti but less than one percent of the 1.3 billion dollars in obligated USAID funds – money designated specifically for Haitian recovery efforts – has gone directly to local Haitian groups. So if less than one percent of USAID funding has gone to Haitian groups, where has the rest of this money been directed? “ This information is nowhere to be found,” Vijaya Ramachandran, a senior fellow with the Centre for Global Development (CGD), a Washington think tank
“When so little of the funding reaches Haitians themselves, it takes them out of the decision-making process and ensures that aid programmes are not actually responsive to the needs of people on the ground,” Jake Johnson of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), another Washington think tank says. USAID gave seven of the 10 largest contracts for operations in Haiti to Chemonics International, a for-profit provider that Johnson says is the largest USAID contractor in the world. The public is unable to ascertain how Chemonics spent the vast majority of its multi-million-dollar contracts in Haiti due to USAID’s lack of oversight.
The USA sought to assist Haitian recovery efforts by strengthening the country’s garments industry. Following the earthquake, USAID partnered with the Clinton Foundation, the Inter-American Bank and Sae-A Trading, a Korean textile manufacturer, to construct the Caracol Industrial Park. Although the agency predicted that the complex would create up to 65,000 jobs, media reports suggest that as of last September the park had created fewer than 1,500 jobs.Furthermore, although the project’s financers gave hundreds of small-scale farmers 3,200 dollars each to vacate their land for the complex, 95 percent of that land today reportedly remains inactive.
Meanwhile, minimum wage will nudge up 12 percent on Jan. 1, from 4.65 to 5.23 dollars (or 200 to 225 gourdes) per day. Calculated hourly, it will go from 58 to 65 cents, before taxes. But the raise will not affect Haiti’s 30,000 assembly factory workers, who are supposed to already be receiving about seven dollars for an eight-hour day – about 87 cents per hour. Recent studies have found rampant wage theft at almost two dozen of the factories that stitch clothing for companies like Gap and Walmart. The wage increase comes almost five years after the Haitian parliament asked for a 200-gourde minimum wage, then worth 4.96 dollars a day, but failed to overcome Washington-backed industry opposition. The raise falls far short of the minimum wage of 11.63 dollars (500 gourdes) that factory worker unions and others were demanding. the Collective of Textile Factory Unions federation (KOSIT) which represents workers in three industrial parks, several reports and many economists agree that 225 gourdes, and even 300 gourdes, are not living wages. A 2011 study by the U.S.-based AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Centre held that a factory worker living in the capital and supporting two children would need to earn about 29 dollars per day (1,152 gourdes), six days a week, to support his or her family.
In November 2013 in the capital and in Haiti’s north, KOSIT, mobilised for the 500-gourde wage. The factory owners countered with an open letter which pled to “keep Haiti competitive” with what they identified as their “big rivals” – Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam, countries all known for harsh conditions and abuse. Because Haitian clothing imports into the United States are restricted based on a rule of origin, certain types of clothing imports over a certain quota must be produced using U.S. materials. These measures are designed to benefit the U.S. textile industry. The quotas and tariffs that the United States places on the Haitian apparel industry continue to inhibit trade-based economic growth.
The country’s 30,000 workers – almost two-thirds of them women – in Haiti’s free trade zone assembly factories stitch together clothing for Gap, Gildan Activewear, Hanes, Kohl’s, Levi’s, Russell, Target, VF, and Walmart. Haitian law stipulates that “the price paid per production unit… must be set in a way that permits a worker to earn at least 300 gourdes for an eight-hour day.” But recent studies by three different international groups, including the U.N.’s International Labour Organisation (ILO), have documented that the vast majority of workers receive the legal minimum only rarely: about 25 percent of the time, according to the ILO.In its October 2013 report, the ILO’s Better Work textile factory monitoring programme found all 23 factories surveyed to be “non-compliant” with the law. The US Workers Rights Consortium , based on worker interviews and pay stubs from five factories (four in the capital and SAE-A at the Caracol Industrial Park), found repeated cases of employers paying workers the incorrect amount for overtime hours. Workers were “being cheated of an average of seven weeks’ pay per year.
From here and here
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