Prime Minister Patrick Manning estimates that it would take US$2 billion a year for several years to rebuild and rehabilitate Haiti.Manning made the comment shortly after returning home form a special CARICOM meeting to discuss Haiti.He said Trinidad and Tobago agreed to offer more assistance to Haiti and would contribute to funding a temporary hospital.
Manning said the additional funds from Trinidad & Tobago would go through a development fund that was proposed at the closing session of the Fifth Summit of the Americas in April last year.
Manning said CARICOM modified the fund to open it for contributions from all countries, as well as international agencies.
“We were all committed to making whatever effort was necessary to rehabilitate Haiti," Manning told reporters at Piarco International Airport.
“In these circumstances, it is Haiti today. It could have been Trinidad and Tobago or it might be Trinidad and Tobago tomorrow... in circumstances such as these we have to be our brothers’ keeper.”
FIFA vice president Jack Warner has responded the call to help and has donated $100,000 of his personal funds to Haiti. And his colleague and fellow FIFA Vice President Chung Moon-Jung has also pledged US$ 500,000.00 to assist in ongoing disaster relief efforts in the Caribbean nation.
Warner has described the gestures as "a true representation of FIFA’s principles."
On Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council approved an increase in peacekeeping forces in Haiti to boost security and help in the distribution of food and water to the victims of the country's devastating earthquake.
The UN Security Council unanimously approved 3,500 extra troops and police officers to beef up security in Haiti and ensure that desperately needed aid gets to earthquake victims.
The additional security comes as the latest estimates from the European Commission, citing Haitian government figures, put the death toll at approximately 200,000, with some 70,000 bodies recovered and trucked off to mass graves.
About 250,000 people were injured and 1.5 million were left homeless, EU officials said. The UN resolution, adopted Tuesday, will add 2,000 troops to the 7,000 military peacekeepers already in the country and 1,500 police to the 2,100-strong international police force.
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