London, March 24: Britain is helping Haiti to rebuild and improve its prisons damaged in the Jan. 12 earthquake as part of overall British assistance to the disaster-struck nation that has reached 150 million pounds ($224 million dollars), a junior UK minister said on Tuesday.
International Development Minister Mike Foster said during a visit to Port-au-Prince that the figure for Britain’s contribution to the international relief effort for Haiti included 91 million pounds donated by the British public.
Britain’s government had provided 20 million pounds of direct emergency aid and the rest of the 150 million pounds total had been channeled through multilateral institutions like the World Bank, the European Union and the Inter-American Development Bank, Foster told a news conference.
The UK had set up a post-disaster stabilization unit in the quake-wrecked Haitian capital and its personnel included British prison experts who would advise Haiti on rebuilding its network of jails, several of which were damaged in the quake.
More than 5,000 prisoners escaped, most from the main national penitentiary. Most of them are still on the run.
“We will work with the authorities here to create a better correctional system,” Foster said.
He added that apart from helping to rebuild the damaged facilities, Britain would be advising on such areas as human rights and treatment of juvenile offenders.
The British experts seconded to help restore Haiti’s prison network had carried out similar work in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories.
Foster said Britain would also attend a March 31 donors’ conference for Haiti in New York, and would deliver its additional support for the country’s long-term reconstruction through the multilateral organizations to which it belonged, such as the EU and the World Bank.
—-Agencies