Protests become more frequent in Haiti as relief efforts struggle

After another night of rain, earthquake survivors in Haiti are demanding adequate shelter. One month after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake, many are still living in makeshift tents, built out of sheets, plastic and cardboard. Edmond Mulet, the head of the United Nations mission in Haiti or MINUSTAH, said they are very concerned about the upcoming rainy season.

"Already last night it rained in Port-au-Prince and you can see all over the city of the effects of this first rain that have been really, really bad. We have mud everywhere, landslides, the possibility of larger landslides coming. So this is very worrying. MINUSTAH has established some rescue teams already that will be ready to assist the population when these things happen because we know it's coming, we know it's going to happen."

Several hundred gathered outside of UN headquarters today to protest the inadequate distribution of aid and shelter. Protests are becoming more frequent - on Sunday, hundreds of women marched to City Hall in the Petionville neighborhood of Port au Prince accusing the Mayor of hoarding aid. On Friday, several hundred protested outside a police building where President Clinton was meeting with Haitian President Preval.

Today, speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Haiti's Ambassador to the US Raymond Joseph addressed the problem of distributing aid.

“Ambassador Lewis Lucke, who is the USAID overall coordinator of the aid, has said publicly that he has not seen any corruption. Are we doing it fast enough? Probably not. I have been asking for the use of helicopters to ferry the aid to the areas in the bad places where we have not reached and some of them were dropping them and I’m against dropping of the aid like that because when you do that only the strong get it and I think we should do a better job of distributing the aid. We’re trying. I hope it can be better yet.”

The UN says they've distributed shelter materials to about 50,000 families. But more than a million people are now homeless, living in spontaneous settlements. Haiti's Prime Minister also said the government doesn't have a plan on how to move this many homeless into better shelters. He also said building permanent housing could take a decade.