Junior Pierre drives a mototaxi to Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, and for four months it has had to cope with a shortage of petrol and pay exorbitant prices on the black market. It is an example of how Haitians survive fuel shortages, gang violence and now also cholera.
He had to buy a gallon of fuel for 3,500 gourdes (about $ 28 for 4.5 liters) when he ran out of gas in a sensitive area of the city and confesses that, given these prices, he has no choice but to increase the tariffs.
“I have a wife and children, I have to feed them and drink”, says this driver, who is usually located at Gérald Bataille’s Carrefour – a few kilometers from the US embassy – next to his motorcycle taxi, lately. one of the main ways to get around in Port-au-Prince due to the lack of other means of transport.
no trace of fuel
The lack of fuel in Haiti affects all sectors: various shopping malls, service companies and hospitals They have communicated that their doors will be closed or have adopted tight schedules, although they promise to return to normal when the problem is resolved.
Although Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced about two weeks ago that fuels, whose prices had doubled in less than a year, would be available at the pumps, the reality shows otherwise. Y scarcity persists.
Henry indicated that the prices of oil derivatives would rise, but that they would be lower than what was paid on the black market, while he signaled a reduction in subsidies.
The announcement of this increase has intensified protests against a government that Haitians consider unable to resolve the crisis in which the country is plunged. For yearsexacerbated after the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise.
The demonstrations have been massive these days and have been accompanied by fires, looting and blockade systematics of different arteries and regions of the country.
However, it appears that the promised fuel exists, but for weeks the main entrance to the oil terminal Is locked by the powerful leader of the G9 armed gang alliance, former police officer Jimmy Cherisier, aka Barbecue, who has taken much of the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince hostage.
According to the Varreux Oil Terminal on Twitter, as of September 29, its stock status was 5,978,574 gallons (816,228 of kerosene and 5,162,346 of gasoline), but due to the blockade it is not possible to load the trucks from day 12.
“The barricades erected and the ditches dug around the Varreux terminal make access inaccessible to operators, employees and trucks,” he complains.
Without water and with anger
Given this situation, the authorities are powerless and the black market for fuel is on the rise, which it can reach $ 40 per gallon.
This affects all sectors. This is the case with the production and distribution of drinking watersince it depends on increasingly scarce fuels.
Something extremely troubling the reappearance of cholera in Haiti, a disease controlled only since 2019 after the great epidemic that emerged shortly after the 2010 earthquake and whose origin would have been in a dump of fecal waste into a river by blue helmets deployed in the country, with the result of 520,000 infected e the death of at least 7,000.
Since last Sunday the Caribbean Botting Company (CBC) – the Culligan water bottler, widely consumed in Port-au-Prince and in the main provincial cities – has not been able to produce and distribute its product, because, it is said, ” our diesel reserves have been completely exhausted ”.
Another sector that has announced cuts is banking, which only opens its branches the day before Monday Wednesday and Friday and it will only be able to serve customers “as long as the scarce fuel reserves of the banking institutions allow it.”
The Professional Order of Banks asks for the understanding of citizens in the face of “this exceptional measure and hopes that a solution to this dramatic situation will soon be found”, which once again puts Haitians to the test.
The author is a journalist from the EFE agency
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Source: Clarin
