Commentary: October, the cruelest month of the year in Haiti
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| Published on Saturday, October 24, 2009 | Email To Friend Print Version
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By Jean H Charles
The month of October represents for most Haitian families, the cruelest month of the year. They must choose between feeding their families and allocating their meager funds to eat for sending their children to school.
The business of schooling is one of the grossest oriented sectors of the Haitian economy. The Haitian government has through the years abdicated its constitutionally mandated mission to provide basic education to all its children to the private sector.
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| Jean H Charles MSW, JD is Executive Director of AINDOH Inc a non profit organization dedicated to building a kinder and gentle Caribbean zone for all. He can be reached at: jeanhcharles@aol. |
Everyone and their fathers who can put their hands on a private house with four to five rooms has opened a school, most of the time with dubious standard of quality and integrity. The Haitian government as a bad entrepreneur is too happy to outsource with no expense on its side that crucial role of educating the children of the country.
The Haitian family might be one of the most school oriented unit on earth. The child is seen as a saving bank for the future. It knows a child without education will not be worth much in the future. The mother and the father will sacrifice everything to ensure that the tuition fees for the year are paid in October.
In a country where 70 percent of the population has not seen a permanent job for the last fifteen years, this expense is a major feat that is not easily surmounted. The Haitian government has instituted a National Coordination of Food Security – CNSA – to bring about an alert system in the case of major food scarcity.
In its report of September 2009, it noted clearly on the first page of its report for the month of September that the cost link to the secularization of the child constitutes a source of food insecurity. The poor family in Haiti must use 60 percent of its funds earmarked for food to be reallocated for the schooling of its children.
The Haitian legislature has voted a law to curtail the numerous fees that the private and the public schools have pegged on the regular tuition fees, yet the Executive is stalling signing the ordinance into law.
In a stark contrast to years past, the month of October used to be the sweetest one of the year. It has for generations been the month when the stems of the coffee trees are filled with juicy pink and dark red beans ready to be dried in the sun before they are exported to all corners of the globe to the delight of connoisseurs of fine coffee.
It is also the month when the sculpture-like fruit called coco is ready to be opened so the beans can be transformed into the succulent chocolate, the preferred Aphrodite of women and of the gods. October was seen as the month of harvest, when nature, God and the hard work of men combined to produce in abundance the juicy oranges and the other staples that the rest of the world is so eager to get, such as Haitian cotton labeled second best after Egyptian cotton. Erosion and bad governance has made Haiti the orphan child of the world.
Progress has not been part of the lot of Haiti. It is a country that enjoys one of the highest numbers of ONG per capita. With a population of 9 million people Haiti has as many ONG as India with 1 billion and half population. Yet it is descending deeper and deeper into the abyss of abject poverty. Haiti is the best example that development must come from within. Without a minimum of good governance, those 900 ONG have not been able to bring about a minimum of social and economic impact on the lives of those who cannot afford to send their children to school.
Come November, the October witch will be gone, but the Haitians will have to harness their bravado to elect next year in November a government that cares to create a nation that shall be hospitable to all. Stay tuned, next week, the state of the state of Haiti at the eve of its election year 2010. | | | | Reads : 791 | | | |
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