EXPERIENCES ON THE GROUND by Renold Estime, Water Systems Project Manager

For those of us working on the UN OCHA/ Work For Haiti Jobs Initiative Project, no matter how different our responsibilities, I’m convinced that all of us have one thing in common; the situations we’ve faced have been incredibly vivid and an incredible education.  What I think I’ll remember most are our experiences on the project’s Hiring Days. We’ve just finished hiring our second of three groups, and it’s clear that our first round of hiring went much more smoothly than the second.

Well in advance of both of our Hiring Days, we met with regional leaders to work out the logistics required when doing mass hiring: details such as deciding on a date, the location, security, etc.. For our first hiring, word had not yet spread about our programme and people did not yet realize that when we appeared we’d be hiring for paying jobs. On our first Hiring Day, we arrived to find that most people were queuing up and patiently waiting...despite a few small conflicts among the people in line, our first Hiring Day was generally calm.

Now that we’re in the second month of our programme, word has spread, and the whole region knows about our Cash For Work project. We now have many more people who want us to give them jobs than we’re able to hire, which explains why our second Hiring Day was not as calm as the first.

Our management team is very keen on being fair about the hiring process; they take all opportunities to make sure that news of our upcoming Hiring Day is made very public. Plus, our crews from the first round of hiring brought a great deal of attention, a fact which also helped word spread fast. Most people in the area now know that we hire for 20 days of work.  People who hoped to be hired in the second round began to count the days and try to estimate the date and location of our second round of hiring...and also stratigize about what was the best way to be the first in line.

We found that as our second Hiring Day approached, the tension in communities was growing. We established a fixed date for the next round of hiring and let the people in the communities know the date and location. Due to the huge number of people who need jobs, we’ve witnessed people queued up as early as 3am for a hiring session which begins at 8am! This is the reality of high unemployment in Haiti!

Our most recent Hiring Day in the town of Deslandes will remain one of my most vivid memories while working on the Cash For Work project. It was in Deslandes where we were hiring for a water pipe rehabilitation project. The mass of people who showed up to be hired were so many in comparison to our quota for employment, that regional leaders were forced to change our original location for hiring.  They said they were concerned that the location we’d agreed on wouldn’t be large and safe enough to accommodate everyone.

I worked with regional leaders to choose local people who would be responsible for our security. Everyone who is brought on-board to assist is told that anyone who is 18yrs of age or older, and has a valid, photo ID card is eligible to be hired for our programme.  We set up our chairs, tables, pen, ink, contracts, register papers, as well as guide ropes to secure the area, and began to register people for jobs. 

After about 20 minutes – just enough time to get 15-20 people registered, we could see the tension rising among the many people queuing up; although they had formed two lines, many had succumbed to temptation and were pushing and shoving each other to pass over the barrier and eventually surround our table.  We understand that they are driven do this because so many in Haiti desperately need a job, however seeing that things were getting out of hand and becoming unsafe, our Programme Manager, Gozde, went over twice to confront the mass of people to ask for calm and order. Nevertheless the pushing continued, and many people continued to overpass the barrier, surround our table, all of them showing us their ID cards and asking for jobs.

Because safety had become an issue and to clam down tensions, we packed up all of our belongings and left for the nearest dispensary for just 30 minutes.  We’d had to do this once before, and both times, we used that 30 minutes to prepare a new strategy to enable us to finish hiring.  I remembered a Haitian proverb in Creole, “Nan ranmen tout, ou pedi ni sak ni krab” (One who wants it all, loses the bag AND the crab).  So, for this particular hiring, we decided to use another strategy; we’d only hire men 50yrs and older and women ages 40yrs and older - people who did not fit into these criteria have lost “Ni sak ni crab” !! 

We returned to the hiring location with our new strategy and searched for men and women who appeared to be above 50 and 40 years old.  It seemed to work;  when people realized that age was the determining factor, they were far less agitated about not being hired. Since we’d naturally eliminated hundreds of people, our task now became to find enough people who fit our new age criteria......a process which turned out to be quite enjoyable and even unexpectedly funny.  Instead of people swarming us and asking us for a job, we literally went among people and asked those who appeared to be older than 40 yrs, what their exact age was…when we’d spot men and women in the street who we thought might fall within our new age criteria, we’d stop and ask them if they’d like a job.

Here’s what we’d say when we approached people, and ultimately succeeded in filling our hiring quota both safely and fairly:

“ Bonjou Mesye! Ki laj ou? Ou pa ta renmen travay?”

(Hello Sir! How old are you? Wouldn’t you like to work ?)

“Yes! But how am I going to overpass this mass of people to be employed?” 

“ Ou gen kat identite?” 

(“Do you have your ID card?”)

“Wi!”   
(“Yes!”)

This situation made me think of a story told in the Bible.  A man had prepared a big buffet for many friends, however none of his guests appeared. He sent someone to find out what had happened to all of his guests.  When he was told that each guest had come up with an excuse for why they were unable to attend, the host sent his maids into the streets looking for people who’d never had the chance to eat and enjoy such food.  In our experience in Deslandes, our guests did indeed show up, but they did not respect the rules of the game and so they too lost out.

In life, we proceed on the assumption that one must plan, prepare and do what is necessary to get ahead, but when such thinking results in the near chaos we faced in Delandes, those who opted out of the competition (and the resulting chaos) were ultimately the ones who got ahead.