Poor oversight endangers Haiti students

Bloody images
For days after La Promesse fell, parents and students were consumed with bloody images of the dead and frantic rescue efforts on Haitian television and in newspapers. Then, five days later, a back-alley house containing a church school partially fell, injuring at least seven students and a teacher. Thousands of bystanders raced ambulances, U.N. peacekeepers and Red Cross vehicles to the scene.

Pushed back by U.N. and Haitian police, the crowd's nerves jumped to panic amid false rumors that a third school had collapsed nearby. Two children were injured in the melee that followed.

The next day a school emptied, and two students were injured falling down stairs in another panic. Witnesses said later that a piece of lumber had fallen harmlessly onto the roof from a nearby building site.

Daunting task
President Rene Preval has pledged to crack down on lawless construction. Three public schools were closed after the collapse for emergency renovations because of concerns over building safety, Jean-Pierre said.

But with a struggling education ministry unable to even catalog the schools that line dusty hillsides or fill bullet-pocked downtown districts in the capital, officials face a daunting task.

"Things have gone so far it's very difficult to say we have the right answers," said Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis. But she added that the government would pursue a combination of financial incentives for schools that meet building standards and punishment for building owners who do not comply.

Meanwhile, storefront schools are stacked one atop the other in downtown Port-au-Prince's rundown Bel Air district, competing for customers with bright signs and promises of price specials. Boys and girls in neat gingham uniforms cram into hovels that reek of the open-pit urinals nearby, scrawling rote Creole phrases onto blackboards.

The second floor of one primary school threatens to buckle atop worm-eaten wooden and cracked concrete pillars. "We've never had any inspectors here," said Monique Ocean, the school secretary and principal's wife.

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