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INTERVIEW-Help Haiti: employ its migrant workers - UN official
Written by: Olesya Dmitracova
A survivor carries a bag of rice during a food distribution in Port-au-Prince, Feb. 3, 2010. REUTERS/Kena Betancur
LONDON (AlertNet) - The United States and the Dominican Republic could help Haiti recover from last month's devastating earthquake by employing Haitian workers to fill seasonal labour gaps, a senior U.N. official said on Friday. "More than the immediate support ... in the form of money and some technical capacity, the big issue really also is finding some longer-term trade and employment solutions," said Salil Shetty, director of the United Nations' Millennium Campaign, which aims to eradicate extreme poverty by 2015. He cited the example of a New Zealand scheme which makes it easier for employers in some industries to recruit temporary workers from abroad. "There's no reason why the southeastern part of the U.S. or even the Dominican Republic can't do this sort of system in a structured and legalised way because there is a shortage of labour (there)," he told Reuters in a telephone interview. Even before the Jan. 12 earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people, Haiti was heavily dependent on money earned by its workers abroad. In 2008 it received $1.9 billion in remittances, an amount equal to 16 percent of its gross domestic product, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. The U.S. government has already decided to allow up to 200,000 Haitians who were in the United States when the earthquake struck to stay. They will be allowed to work for up to 18 months to send remittances to Haiti in what the United States says is a form of indirect economic aid. The international community should help the Dominican Republic - by providing financial and technological aid and trade opportunities - absorb more Haitian workers "in a systematic and structured way", Shetty said. An estimated one million Haitians, mostly illegal immigrants, work in the Dominican Republic which shares the same island with far poorer Haiti. "The Dominican Republic already has better economic opportunities and has the capacity to expand economic opportunities," Shetty said. Investing in such areas as the building of infrastructure and housing in Haiti will create local jobs, he added.
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