New York - Efforts will be made to secure investments and fulfil donors' pledges of financial assistance to Haiti to aid recovery from a series of hurricanes last year, a United Nations official said Tuesday. Paul Farmer, a deputy to UN special envoy for Haiti Bill Clinton, said in concluding a five-day visit to the Caribbean island nation that the recovery task is not easy. Most Haitians live on less than 2 dollars a day, the limits of extreme poverty.
"But you have my word that we will not let you down," Farmer said in a meeting in Port-au-Prince attended by Haiti's President Rene Preval and some of members of his cabinet.
Former president Clinton and Farmer were appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to assist Haiti and are working on the issue on 1-dollar-per-year contracts.
Farmer - a doctor who has worked for the former US president in the past and recently focussed on aid work in Africa - told Haitian officials that he and Clinton would try to work out programmes jointly with the Haitian people to create jobs, improve the delivery of basic services, strengthen disaster recovery and preparedness, and attract private sector investment.
The UN Security Council is scheduled to hold a debate on the situation in Haiti on Wednesday.
