30226: Leiderman, re 30225: (analysis) how many hours in a Haitian day? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leiderman@mindspring.com


Dear Readers:

Thanks again for Ms. Roebling's posting of articles concerning USAID's current initiatives in Haiti.  But please pass me a grain of salt:  $18,000 to restore a school for 5,000 students wouldn't even buy enough wall-paint and plaster to do the job, so either there's a typo in the article(s) or this long-acronymed agency is trying to take credit for nation-building on the cheap.  $18,000 is nothing compared to the much more valuable charitable shipments of food and books and school buses that Americans regularly send to Haiti, only to find them stuck on the docks of Cap Haitien and Port-au-Prince for months because so many people down there have excuses and their hands out, refusing to be accountable for why millions, perhaps billions in charity doesn't get express delivered to starving Haitians.  I bet a box of lingerie gets better service than a whole crate of antibiotics.  Probably because the recipients tip better...

This all needs to be looked at more closely.  For example: The two big stand-alone USAID contract offers for Haiti currently posted to www.fedbizopps.gov are each in the multi-million dollar range per year but the maximum permitted "levels of effort" seem small.  The one for direct technical assistance to Haitian ministries is capped at about 3000 hours per year and the one for agricultural-tourism-handicrafts integration and development is for about 2000 hours per year.  One full-time job is approx. 40 hours per week times 50 weeks = 2000 hours.
So, unless I possibly missed something, these contracts don't even seem to be enough hours for one all-around staffer to occupy an office, much less offer the kind of high-level advice and organizing called for in these contracts.  Then, how can a contractor spend $3-5 million each per year on these tasks?  Answer: Buy lots of business class airplane tickets, bill advisors time at $2000+ per day, including travel time; book a lot of intermittent overnights at Hotel Montana, rent bulletproof limousines and Land Rovers, etc., in other words, carry on as if it's typical war-zone style consulting...with very little money instead of blood and sweat trickling down to Haitians.

And don't forget, these advertised competitive contracts are small compared to the number and the amounts of giant direct contracts awared to a chosen few whenever, for example, a storm hits Haiti -- a few years ago, the Gonaive's disaster sent more than $20 million to CARE and more than $30 million to Bethesda, Maryland engineering firm Development Alternatives, Inc. [DAI].  I think that's typical, like the words to that old song, "The suit and the pants get all of the praise, but the vest gets all the gravy."

There has to be other ways to skin this pauvre chat, and remittances don't build equity.  So, across the neighborhoods of Miami, Brooklyn, Dorchester, Atlanta and the like, I think the whole Haitian Diaspora needs to assemble a 5-year and a 10-year strategic plan.  Do I see any hands?

Thank you,

Stuart Leiderman
leiderman@mindspring.com