If the report is coming out of the Boston Globe, this is the same city that built a series of faulty traffic tunnels that are expected to cost of 22 billion dollars by the time they are done paying them off. 1.8 billion dollars isn’t that much money to fix a problem that severe. The combined war in Afghanistan alone has cost about $323,000,000,000 alone as of this writing which is a tiny fraction of anything given to Haiti and nobody ever accused Afghanistan of being a wealthy country either.
It is great that they got help and many people were very generous but Haiti is one screwed up place and a mere 1.8 billion dollars is never going to fix it. They share the island with Dominican Republic which isn’t that great on all counts either but nothing compared to Haiti which is probably the most impoverished country in the Western hemisphere. You can dig a lot of wells with 1.8 billion dollars if a first world country based corporations take over as project manager but you can’t rebuild the hospitals, schools, and most importantly, the culture with that amount of money.
Trash collection is difficult when you don’t have more than a handful of trash trucks. It’s even harder when the streets are choked with so much earthquake debris (from the collapse of weak buildings) that you can’t get those trucks down the road.
It’s difficult to focus on much of anything when you’re busy just providing food and medical care to that many people.
Just one small point in the many problems that prevent proper rebuilding (from a small charity, led by a Haitian women living in Germany and volunteers): some of the orphanages were damaged in the quake. They don’t know whether it’s better to repair them or to tear them down and rebuild them. They would need a structural engineer to access that, which aren’t around.
If they decide to tear down, they need permission from govt., which is corrupt and incomptent, plus equipment to tear it down, which might be not available, or in use elsewhere, or sitting in the yard waiting for permission from the govt. Then they need vehicles to transport the rubble away - over damaged streets, with vehicles maybe busy with other tasks. Then they need vehicles to transport new materials there, same as above, plus machines (different from the tearing-down machines) to rebuild.
The labour of the Haitians is trivial to the rest.
My WAG, based on the reports I’ve gotten, is that “trash” is not a small plastic bag of household trash, but rather, they mean huge heaps of concrete, brickes, iron etc. from the buildings themselves, because getting the rubble cleared away is a big problem. So it’s not like every Haitian just takes a garbage bag in hand and walks around picking up litter. Rather, the roads are damaged, the vehicles are damaged and too few, gasoline is expensive and limited, and further, the whole legal situation is unclear. So the streets are filled with temporary make-shifts sheds and tents, and the people, tired of waiting are trying to rebuild with their hands, which means unsafe. Meanwhile, the govt. and foreign aid wants to rebuild properly, with safety standards and good infrastructure (water etc.), but to get things together takes time. And the people are afraid that if the govt. does rebuild better, they will be kicked out from the place they lived before.
Yes, rickety sheds could be built quicker and cheaper than proper houses. But that would cause much more problems in the long run than doing it right now, when things have to be redone anyway. The problem - and that’s not specific to Haiti!, corrupt or incomptent govt. are everywhere! - is that too often, people end up living in tents for years and years, while the govt. doesn’t manage to get the real good housing built.
One of the reasons for the high deathcount in the quake in first place was that houses were built cheaply and not according to the modern standards for Earthquake areas developed in Europe and the US, because the govt. didn’t care about enforcing standards, just letting things slide, so people built as they could, which was poorly, and caused a lot of damage.
It takes my state DOT years to repave a stretch of interstate. What on earth makes you think that all major roads in Haiti can be brought back to working condition in 6 months?!