22901: (Chamberlain) Officials drive street vendors away in bid to clean capital (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Aug 3 (AP) -- Police swept through Haiti’s capital Monday,
driving thousands of street merchants from their stands in a new initiative
to clean up the city.

City officials estimate that 500,000 merchants work unregulated in
Port-au-Prince, a city of 2.5 million people, leaving mounds of garbage
throughout the capital.

"It’s almost impossible to keep the streets clean with them here," said
Gerald Raymond, an adviser to deputy mayor Yannick Mezile, pointing to a
curb lined with plastic bottles and other debris.

The clean up plan has created 300 new jobs for the city, but it threatens
the livelihoods of the thousands of merchants who survive on selling
everything from clothing to chickens.

"I don’t know where I’ll go," said Serge Valdre, a 55-year-old hardware
merchant who has been selling his wares for more than three decades. "I
have nine kids I have to feed," he added, trembling with rage as he packed
under the gaze of a mayoral aide and a policeman.

Mezile, who is coordinating the city’s clean up plan, said her office has
found an alternative location for the vendors on the outskirts of
Port-au-Prince. She declined to reveal the location, saying it was not yet
ready for use.

Police made announcements through loudspeakers warning street vendors to
pack up their merchandise and leave. Officers and scores of city workers
dismantled roadside stands, throwing crates and tables into pickup trucks.

"We’re going to do this all day every day," Raymond said. "This is long
term."

Several vendors packed up to avoid arrest or having their goods thrown into
a municipal truck, but vowed to keep selling. Many said they wanted to be
able to send their children to school in September and could not afford any
loss of income now.

Free public schools are scarce in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western
Hemisphere, and many parents struggle to pay monthly tuition and other
expenses.

Most Haitian adults in the city work in the informal economy, and the
number of street vendors in the capital has exploded in the past decade as
peasants flowed into the city looking for employment.

The garbage in the downtown market districts ties up traffic and trucks
occasionally get stuck in the grime. It deters pedestrian traffic, and
emergency officials say it slows down response times.

Trash pickup ceased altogether following the ouster of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Feb. 29 and worsened with recent rains that swept
sludge down from the hills. A U.S.-led peacekeeping mission that was here
in the months that followed helped with clean up drives.

Philippe Armand, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Haiti,
has said the vendors have badly damaged legitimate businesses.

"The informal economy has destroyed the formal economy," Armand said. "I
think the government is really trying to get the country back on track, but
the problems are mammoth."