Plans take shape for industrial park (sweat shop zone) in Haiti's northeast

July 19, 2011--Plans for a large industrial park/free trade/sweat shop zone are proceeding for the northeast of Haiti, adjacent to the border with the Dominican Republic. Below are three articles on the subject, one in English and two in French. Apparently, there is considerable controversy about where, exactly, the factories will sit and whether they will encroach on land currently used by agricultural producers.

From Cap Haitien, Haiti's second largest city that lies on the north coast, it is app. 60 km east to the town of Ouanaminthe on the Dominican Republic border. Ouanaminthe is 20 km inland and an existing 'free trade' zone. Between it and Cap Haitien lie the towns of Fort Liberté and Caracol, both on the coast. Several trade union organizations in Haiti are attempting to organize the workers in the northeast free trade zone(s).

Labour-intensive industrial investment such as that being undertaken by SAE-A Trading of Korea, is held up by Bill Clinton and others in the HIRC as the path to Haiti's economic development. Oddly, Mr. Clinton self-criticized his presidency in March, 2010 for having caused much destruction to Haiti's economy, and particularly its agricultural production, by exploiting sweatshop labor and imposing subsidized, agricultural imports on the national market at prices against which Haitian peasants could not compete. "No need to worry about agriculture," said the policy, "you can obtain cheap food from imports and buy it with the wages you will earn or the taxes that the foreign companies will pay."

Last month, members of a Canadian fact-finding delegation were told by leaders of Haiti's largest peasant organization that they and the rest of the peasant movement remain on the sidelines of consultations and decisions over Haiti's post-earthquake future. So, while many Haitians will welcome industrial investment (and fight so that trade unions and decent wages will be recognized), the needed priority on agriculture is still not being addressed. Plus ça change, plus c'est pareil... (The more things change, the more they stay the same...)

Source: Canada Haiti Action Network

Haiti: Fertile Land Seized for New Sweatshop Zone

July 13, 2011 - Residents of Caracol, a village in Haiti’s Northeast department, say they were never consulted or even warned about plans to build a huge new “free trade zone” (FTZ, a complex of assembly plants) on land where many of them have been farming for some 20 years. “It’s the most fertile area we have at Caracol,” resident Renel Pierre told journalist Sylvestre Fils Dorcilus. “It’s inconceivable and unacceptable that the government could choose this part of the land to set up an industrial park.”

The Parc industriel du Nord (Northern Industrial Park, PIN) is a joint project of the US government, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB, or BID in French and Spanish) and South Korea’s leading apparel manufacturer, Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd. Together, they are putting some $300 million into the FTZ, which promoters claim will generate 20,000 jobs in the short term and 65,000 jobs over time. The Haitian government provided the land, which it says is state property; the administration of former president René Préval (1996-2001 and 2006-2011) promised to compensate the peasants who have been using it [see Update #1074].

“The government has no respect for us,” Robert Etienne, a local farmer said to Dorcilus, whose three-part series on the project was produced with backing from the UK-based Haiti Support Group and was published by the online Haitian news service AlterPresse(full article, in French, is reproduced below). “It was only one fine morning at the beginning of January–when a team of technicians came to explore the area–that we were told about the project.” The technicians used heavy equipment to remove everything in their way, including crops and part of a church that a pastor, Arnold Baptiste, built there 10 years earlier.

“Imagine for a moment the wrongs done to peasant farmers who are getting ready to harvest their crops or who had just finished sowing.” Etienne said.

Some of the farmers have formed the Association for the Defense of Caracol Workers’ Rights (ADTC) to demand compensation and new land from the government. They indicate that they don’t trust the government’s promises, remembering that peasants in Ouanaminthe, on the Dominican border 45 km southeast of Caracol, reportedly were never compensated for land used to build the Compagnie de Développement Industriel S.A. (Codevi) FTZ there, which opened in 2003. (AlterPresse 7/4/11)

Other Caracol residents are optimistic about the FTZ. A young woman identified as “Yole” told Dorcilus that unemployment was at “a high point” in the department, as in the rest of the country. “Sure, working conditions for employees in the industries are alarming, but I think the industrial park will help young people a lot on the economic level,” she said.

In a study submitted to Haiti’s Economy and Finance Ministry (MEF), the Boston-based consulting firm KOIOS Associates LLC notes environmental problems with the project, such as air pollution, residual waste and the heavy use of water resources by the plants. But many of these negative effects could be attenuated “[i]f a sufficient proportion of additional tax revenues [expected from the FTZ] were dedicated to the development and improvement of the region’s social and physical infrastructures,” according to the report. (AlterPresse 7/6/11)

The new FTZ is clearly a priority for the US government. In early June Cheryl Mills, chief of staff for US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, paid her second visit to the site, accompanied by a high-level delegation that included US ambassador Kenneth Merten, US Agency for International Development (USAID) deputy mission director Anthony Chan and Mark D’Sa, an executive from the US retailer GAP who is “on loan” to the State Department. (Haïti Libre (Haiti) 6/15/11)

According to Koios Associates, Oxford University economist Paul Collier, who wrote a United Nations “development plan” for Haiti in 2009, calls the project “development as it should be done.” “This will be a match that strikes a fire and gets things going,” former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) predicts. (Koios Associates website, accessed 7/10/11)

Source: Weekly Updates on the Americas