Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Battle Begins Over Who'll Get Lucrative Haiti Cleanup Contracts
U.S. firms want part in Haiti cleanup
As Haiti begins digging out from under 60 million cubic meters of earthquake wreckage, U.S. firms have begun jockeying for a bonanza of cleanup work.
In this Jan. 21, 2010 file photo released by MINUSTAH, the town of Leogane, about 30 miles outside Port-au-Prince, shows the massive destruction of buildings. At least two politically connected U.S. firms have enlisted powerful local allies in Haiti to help compete for the high-stakes business. (AP Photo/MINUSTAH, Logan Abassi, File) It's unclear at this point who will be awarding the cleanup contracts, but there is big money to be made in the rubble of some 225,000 collapsed homes and at least 25,000 government and office buildings.
At least two politically connected U.S. firms have enlisted powerful local allies in Haiti to help compete for the high-stakes business.
Randal Perkins, the head of Pompano Beach-based AshBritt, has already met with President René Préval to tout his firm's skills. To press his case, Perkins, a big U.S. political donor with a stable of powerful lobbyists, has lined up a wealthy and influential Haitian businessman, Gilbert Bigio, as a partner.
Perkins isn't the only hard-charging contender for cleanup work. Another is Bob Isakson, managing director of Mobile, Ala.-based DRC Group, a disaster recovery firm whose résumé includes hurricanes, wars, ice storms and floods. He's also met with Préval since the earthquake.
How the work is delegated and who ends up awarding the contracts remains to be seen, but Préval is expected to play a pivotal role in setting priorities, even if others hold the purse strings. The United Nations designated former President Bill Clinton to coordinate Haitian relief efforts, and an international forum to coordinate plans is expected to be held this spring.
"We don't know who's going to fund the cleanup and how it's going to proceed. That's all a mystery,'' DRC's Isakson said. "But cleaned up it has to be.''
In his Jan. 28 meeting with Préval, which was attended by a Miami Herald reporter who was chronicling a day in the president's life, Perkins made a hard sell, boasting of AshBritt's $900 million U.S. government contract to clean up after Hurricane Katrina and promising his firm would create 20,000 local jobs.
"It does no good if you bring in predominantly U.S. labor and when it's done, they leave. This is an opportunity to train thousands of Haitian people in skills and professions,'' Perkins, a 45-year-old Sweetwater native, told The Miami Herald. "If you don't create jobs for Haitians, your recovery is going to be a failure.''
AshBritt, Perkins said, also has clinched a coveted contract to handle future disaster cleanup work for the U.S. government in California and several other states.
"First and foremost, we have the experience,'' Perkins said.
That experience has come with controversy.
After Katrina, some questioned whether AshBritt's political donations or lobbyists paved the way for its fat federal contracts. The lobbyists have included: Barbour Griffith & Rogers, a firm founded by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour; Mike Parker, a former Mississippi Republican congressman who also was a senior official with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; and Ron Book, a South Florida power broker.
Congressional hearings after Katrina aired objections that local contractors were passed over in favor of AshBritt. A 2006 congressional report examining federal contract waste and abuse noted AshBritt used multiple layers of subcontractors, each of whom got paid while passing on the actual work to others.
Even now, AshBritt is under scrutiny by the Broward school district after an internal audit found the company allegedly overbilled by $765,000 for work after Hurricane Wilma in October 2005.
Perkins said the internal auditor's assertions "are so baseless and frivolous.'' He said a pending outside audit, ordered by the school district, will show that AshBritt did everything correctly.
The federal government wouldn't have recently re-awarded and extended a contract for future disaster cleanup work if AshBritt were in question, Perkins said. "It's federal money. If anything the auditor said were true, I'd be debarred by the federal government,'' Perkins said.
The AshBritt audit has drawn more attention since the arrest in September 2009 of suspended Broward School Board member Beverly Gallagher in a federal corruption probe involving the school district's construction program. Gallagher has pleaded not guilty. Investigators have subpoenaed thousands of records pertaining to the audit and questioned board members about Book, who is registered as the lobbyist for AshBritt before the Broward County Commission, but not before the School Board.
DRC, meanwhile, was also quick to react to the potential for new business in Haiti. It had people on the ground in Haiti within 36 hours after the Jan. 12 quake.
Since then, it has been helping Haitian officials and also made a charter plane available to help in relief efforts.
DRC, whose Haiti headquarters is a squat, yellow building off one of Port-au-Prince's main thoroughfares, has been helping in the sensitive task of removing bodies and debris at the Hotel Montana, where dozens of aid workers, college students and United Nations employees died. It also has done work at bank sites around the city.
"We've been asked to do quite a few sites for demolition and the recovery of victims,'' said Isakson, a former FBI agent. "It's a daunting task. It's far from the normal disaster. It's more delicate. The victims' families want to come to the site and have closure.''
DRC, which has been in Haiti for several years and built a campsite used for the construction of the U.S. Embassy in the capital, has teamed up with V&F Construction, one of Haiti's largest road builders and part of the Vorbe Group, which is run by a powerful Haitian family.
Isakson said the company's current work is modest, including setting up generators, toilets and showers.
Meanwhile, Bergeron Emergency Services, part of J.R. Bergeron's Bergeron Land Development in Pembroke Pines, is already running ads to hire heavy equipment operators and project managers to do demolition and debris removal in Haiti.
Bergeron couldn't be reached for comment.
For his part, Perkins has been making frequent trips between South Florida and Port-au-Prince and meeting with Haitian government ministers. His local partner, Bigio, is chairman of GB Group in Haiti, a large industrial and commercial company.
Perkins, who said he had dinner with the Haitian ambassador in Washington two days after the earthquake, envisions using the cleanup of Haiti to lay a foundation for a new economy in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
He said he wants to set up training programs to develop job skills for Haitians and also is talking about hiring Haitian Americans in South Florida to go to Haiti to help in the cleanup and to bridge language and culture gaps.
"The work over there is a massive undertaking that is going to require multiple companies with various disciplines,'' Perkins said.
"It's all about creating jobs,'' he added. "When faced with major devastation and loss of life and property, you have a new opportunity to do things in a new and different way.''
32 Comments so far
Show All"But cleaned up it has to be."
Yes, I'm sure they will really clean up!
AMERICAN Disaster Capitalism rears its ugly head again....the
"updated" version of USA Raping Haiti, again and again and again...
how else can it be defined?
Companies create jobs and Haiti needs cost efficient efforts. Government is too expensive compared to contracting and would require huge tax raises on Haitians.
Contracters are MORE expensive then the Government. You can not be less expensive if you have to make a Profit. Compare the pay of a US Soldier to one of those "mercenaries".
There are US firms bidding on these contracts. In order for these firms to profit they have to take MONEY out of the country of Haiti.
Those firms from Haiti that seek contracts to rebuild will not do it gratis. They will do it for PROFIT.
They belong to Haitis richest families who got rich because they exploited their fellow citizens. They have been there all along so pray tell how they created Jobs for the peoples of Haiti in that time?
Is it your suggestion that these rich families of Haiti had NO OPPORTUNITY to create jobs and lift their fellow citizens out of poverty before and something like an earthquake was needed?
I doubt even you would make such a claim.
Thus the suggestion that private companies Jobs for the peoples of Haiti rings hollow.
They make profits and they are supposed to be efficient while government isn't always so. It is mathematically possible to make profits while costing less if the government in question raises taxes too high. If rich families want to clean up the mess at a reduced cost that the government can't beat, why stop them from being charitable? The Haitian government is corrupt to lift a finger. Government should try competing with contracting. I don't support corporate monopolies or government monopolies. The companies would have to prove that they cost less before government gives them the green light so it's done and ready to go.
The TVA created jobs. It built massive infrastructure across the USA from which Corporations profit from today. That was a GOVERNMENT Program.
If a Government has to pay a Contracter to rebuild a city, then the money STILL comes from taxes. The COST to build+ profit is always greater then The Cost to Build.
Why is it that Blackwater can not provide mercenaries at a cost less then what the US MIlitary can provide soldiers?
Why is the US Medical system the most expensive in the World if private industry so efficient?
Mercenaries are obviously paid better than soldiers and get more benefits. They want to earn a living so that's their personal decision.
The U.S. Medical system does not have robust competition. I would support a single payer plan but this same US government that can't get a single thing done right stands no chance of providing citizens even the basics. Private companies capitalized on their monopolization of health care and when competition went down, so did their service while costs soared. I support a public option so that government and private companies can still compete fair and square and I would support no more government subsidies to those corporations competing with government. We will then see who is the most efficient.
Both of your responses are nonsense.
"Mercenaries are obviously paid better than soldiers and get more benefits. They want to earn a living so that's their personal decision."
People are paid according to what an employer is willing and able to pay for their work and not according to what they want to earn.
Your second paragraph is just so much gibberish; not a single sentence makes sense. The single-payer issue concerns healthcare financing and not the delivery of medical services.
Surely whoever is paying you to pollute this board with your lies can find someone who can write better.
q
Thank you
Mercenaries are people too.
Single payer is a nice idea but not if government gets to monopolize health care. Pay attention.
If I'm getting paid, I should have been receiving my checks in the mail.
GWNorth,
Well said.
Chelsea
Vultures circling overhead.
They profit off wars and the death and destruction created by war. They profit off the Ill and the sick. They profit off Hunger. They profit off the suffering and misery of the worlds poorest after Earthquakes and Hurricanes and floods.
They are Ghouls. They are akin to creatures of darkness out of some fantasy story that feed and grow powerful off death and suffering and misery. Such events are "opportunities" to them , something they in fact DESIRE.
It is sick and it is twisted. It is not "Virtue" and it is not "Good".
Strong talk, GwNorth. And I totally agree.
So now we have to ask ourselves, What are we going to do about it?
peace, cm
Your description sounds like a poem by William Blake, which is a major compliment in my book. It brings to mind drawings by Goya, which is another sincere compliment. The works of these artists inspired people to action. We need poets and artists of great talent to fathom and depict the crazy and tragic situation in Haiti.
Joe
Haiti's "government" will be told what to do by Occupation authorities.
Viceroy Bremer can be assigned. Look for $8.8 billion to go missing.
US vultures have been in Haiti for a long time...why should this be any different? Where was your outrage when dah Docs devastated the people? I hope AshBritt gets their asses whooped and tossed into jail. They are lying thieves.
Sounds like another lose, lose situation for the Haitian people! All the American vultures are circling the country. The military, industrial, congressional complex vultures, the disaster capitalist vultures and the christian holier- than-thou vultures. Quit a deadly combination isn't it?
"We don't know who's going to fund the cleanup and how it's going to proceed. That's all a mystery," DRC's Isakson said. "But cleaned up it has to be."
Right. Just like New Orleans was cleaned up.
You'll notice that nobody is suggesting a Haitian organized WPA-style recovery programme using Haitian labour and having Haitians determine what is rebuilt, etc. Something like FDR's WPA programme during the Depression, though it would likely require international funding. And what's the impediment with a Haitian WPA?
The 900 pound vulture would be pissed.
No country too small, too poor, too battered, decimated, on its knees, too grieving, not to be taken advantage of. SHAME. How do they look themselves in the mirror?
from numbers I've heard the private contractor cleanup/relief crews etc will be charging out their labor at 950 per day..... while the people actually on the ground doing the work will get around 200 per day......
so the "fatcats" at the top reap around 75-80% straight off the top as "management" fees......
never mind that the exact same jobs could, and should be done, by haitians for 50 per day....it'd be cheaper and they could make real money for a change....
and the WPA PWA CCC etc during the FDR harry hopkins days ahd an overhad of around 4%
we have 75%+ overhead coming to a relief camp near you!
I think the people of Haiti are going to get screwed a second time.
Each catastrophe represents a great opportunity for DAS KAPITAL to slip through unseen and setup shop, to further undermine the people's self-determination, to make them helplessly addicted to the supply chain out of Kapitalist Kommand/Kontrol.
'"First and foremost, we have the experience" Perkins said'
Experience stolen from the locals, like so much other experience is stolen from so many more locals, worldwide, stolen by ... DAS KAPITAL!!!!!
Yeah why should they bother to clean up their own mess?
The Haitians are sitting back on silk pillows drinking Mai Tai's counting all the millions that the stupid Americans donated to them and laughing all the way to the bank.
Why don't you buy them all free homes too? How about a brand new Mercedes?
Yeah things may be tough in the USA since you can't find a job and are eating Ramen noodles because you're going broke paying all your bills, but send your money over to Haiti cause they need it more.
BC! WITHDRAW all support to these freeloaders immediately!
Just wondering if these contractors are the same 'no bid' contractors that did such a swell job of cleaning up New Orleans or the ones who provided shock-you-til-you-are-dead showers for our troops in Iraq, or are unable to account for millions of dollars worth of stuff that never actually materialized. Nobody is expected to do something for nothing but these contractors have a reputation for scamming the system for profit, not for Missions Accomplished.
Let me venture a guess, certainly to big to fails, Haliburton, Blackwatered(blood),Xe and the rest of the MIC whores.
Oh sorry, the subject was clean-up not tear down and rebuild.
Wouldn't it be cheaper and better managed if the Peace Corps went in and did the work? ( Is there a Peace Corps any more?) Does the UN do this too? At least, the Haitians would get training for building skills, and perhaps they could foster a return to self sustaining agriculture and grow their own food instead of importing ours.
In memory of Nick Berg ( what group did he work with in Iraq?) Wouldn't it be nice if whatever group went in actually put people before profits?
It would also be lovely ( if any U.S. money is used to fund this, eh ...private enterprise...) to see the actual bids. Or if we couldn't see the bids, then the range of bids, and of course, like any contractor, a signed contract of what is to be done and accomplished by a named date. No unlimited funds at all, but a stop, start and a budget with no overruns.
And if that could be done there, then of course, it should be done here right away too!
"It's federal money. If anything the auditor said were true, I'd be debarred by the federal government, Perkins said."
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ... I'm laughing so hard my chair got wet.
OUT with the US, Canada, France, Germany and all other parasitic nations. The only help they know is to themselves.We have seen what corruption/political influence did to Iraq. Let Latin American/Caribbean nations do the job - at least they would not be looking down their noses at these 'black folks'.
Neither the article nor the comments reveal whether the money to pay the contractors is US govt. money, UN money, or the donations solicited from the public to help the earthquake victims. I hope it is not the donations that so many gave hoping that their money would go to helping Haitians not to enriching contractors.
I am a U.S. company and yes we are looking to go over there but are plan is to put 25,000 haition citizens back to work cleaning up and teaching them trades so they can build there country back up stronger than before with correct construction methods, but we can not get though the red tape and get to the people to even listen to our plans. The U.S. contractors will take the money right out of Haiti.