Haiti: Is Your Money Going Where It’s Supposed To?

The amount of money heading to (or already in) Haiti is staggering. Just take a look at the Huffington Post’s list of corporate donations from the USA! In fact, Reuters reported that the USA plans to give more to Haiti than to the tsunami disaster victims, amounting to a cool USD519 mill on 27 Jan 2010. In Malaysia, L’Oreal, Air Asia and a few other corporations and nonprofits, notably Mercy Malaysia, have gone all out to help out with collecting donations for the disaster-stricken country.

Yet, in Port-Au-Prince, it has been reported that hundreds of Haitian earthquake survivors have accused a district mayor of corruption and hoarding food aid provided by relief groups. The victims have reportedly protested in the Petionville neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince, a reflection of the anger among survivors over problems in the international relief effort. According to news reports, aid agencies from around the world have moved tons of rice and other food into Haiti but distributions to the hungry and homeless have been slow and sometimes chaotic.

While it well and good that corporations and individuals have helped in the relief effort, it’s now a matter of how to channel the aid to the victims. Mercy Malaysia has set up a website, Malaysia For Haiti, to collect donations, with funds being channelled into Haiti through Merlin, a UK-based nonprofit organisation. How has the funds from Mercy been used, and has Merlin successfully distributed the aid from Malaysia to the earthquake survivors in Haiti?

Bloggers have commented on this, with woody_invincible stating on the Star blog:

i doubt the money will ever reach the intended destination, maybe a small percentage for that matter.

What corporations and nonprofits should do now is to give updates to donors and the public as to what is being done in Haiti to get aid to the survivors, including whether or not there is alleged political obstruction to getting the aid to where it is supposed to go. The point of it all, whenever it comes to money, is being transparent and accountable.

In fact, Malaysian companies could take a leaf from their foreign counterparts, who want to go “beyond just giving money”.

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