News

On Monday, my colleagues and I crowded into Committee Room 14 for the weekly meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party but unlike some recent notable PLP meetings we weren’t attending to sort out internal disagreements or to quell the latest revolt we were there to hear an update on the Haiti emergency and the news from that far away island was grim.

Douglass Alexander, the Secretary of State for International Development told us that 50,000 corpses had already been buried and some people were forecasting a final death toll as high as 200,000. These mind boggling figures are hard to comprehend for most of us and responding to a disaster on this scale is proving a massive challenge for the relief workers.

The United Nations say that of those that have survived, as many as a million have been left homeless and are living in the open but the good news is that – at last – the help is starting to get through. All of the experts say that the first priority is to send cash and that’s why our Government has trebled their original emergency donation up to £20 million and we’ve cancelled all the Island’s debts.

One of the first teams of helpers to start working on Haiti was a squad of 64 specialised search and rescue firemen from fire brigades across the country, including Kent and they have already saved many lives from the debris of collapsed buildings.

This is a human tragedy of enormous proportions but amongst all the wretched and heart rending stories of suffering, the UK firemen have brought glimpses hope – like the miraculous rescue of a two-year-old girl called Mia which we all saw on our televisions.

I’ve never visited Haiti but I passed by the Island dozens of times when I was with The Blue Funnel Line in the seventies. We used to sail through the Windward Passage which is the deep water strait separating North West Haiti from Guantanamo on the Easternmost tip of Cuba, and which now houses the infamous terrorist detention centre.

The Windward Passage was the main approach route to the Panama Canal which provided a shortcut to the Pacific Ocean and we used to get a good view of Haiti from the straits. It was one of the poorest areas of the world in those days and it’s made no real progress since.

The grinding poverty of the Islanders and the instability of their Government has made the current emergency all the more difficult for everyone and although there has been a tremendous response from the British public to the emergency appeal and from the international community, more cash is urgently needed.

Contributors can be assured that their donations will not be squandered because they’ll be funnelled through trusted legitimate agencies like Christian Aid, Save the Children, Action Aid and the red Cross.

If you haven’t already donated – please consider supporting the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal – you can make a donation by calling 0370 60 60 900 or visiting www.dec.org.uk