GIVING HUMANITARIAN aid to flood-ravaged Hispaniola must transcend any diplomatic difficulty with Haiti, as Bruce Golding so aptly phrased it in the Senate last Friday.
The island, which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic, is Caribbean territory subject to the weather extremes such as the hurricane season due to start officially tomorrow. The fact that the weather system which has been so devastating in Hispaniola had also passed over Jamaica with much less intensity prompts a sense of relief mixed with sympathy for our island neighbours.
Even though Mr. Golding raised the issue of aid in the Senate on Friday it turns out that the Prime Minister had already issued the relevant instructions for an aid plan to be formulated, as State Minister Delano Frankly subsequently disclosed. In fact several ministry and agency personnel had met on Thursday to start the planning.
The proposed aid plan is of a piece with the Government's hosting of deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide for a ten-week stay which ended yesterday. This was done despite the reservations that were expressed and the diplomatic impasse with the new Haitian regime that has since ensued.
The aid is also in keeping with the accommodation given the hundreds of Haitian refugees who have fled their homeland since the ouster of Mr. Aristide. We do not expect that the current rift will hinder acceptance of the humanitarian aid; or indeed that the rift will persist in light of the political realities. With Aristide in exile in South Africa it is unrealistic to expect that resumption of normal relations between Jamaica and Haiti will be too long delayed.
The impact of the flood rains, on Haiti in particular, emphasises one environmental aspect that appears to have been a major factor. News agency reports described flood waters cascading down denuded mountains almost submerging some farming townships.
Haiti's naked mountain slopes are stark testimony to the potential for disaster that the flood rains have brought about. It is a sombré lesson for our own practice of unregulated deforestation which environmentalists have so often decried.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
