Moontown

ReliefWeb, a UN-operated website providing the latest information to humanitarian organizations, on Friday released a graph detailing funding by countries to Haiti. Guyana emerged as the top country in terms of donations against its GDP, which is just over one billion dollars per year.

About .088 percent of Guyana’s GDP has been donated to Haiti in the form of government aid and personal contributions by the Guyanese people, the UN graph tracking donations showed. On average, each person in Guyana donated US$1.31. The Guyanese Red Cross announced donations of over GY$250 million (US$1.4 million) to Haiti.

Ghana was number two with .018 of its GDP donated to Haiti. The average donated per person in Ghana was US$0.13.

Canada had the highest per-person donations at US$3.92 and 0.0087 of its GDP has been committed to Haiti.

The United States donated an average of US$0.52 per person and has committed 0.0011 of its total GDP.

Following the devastating January 12 earthquake, President Bharrat Jagdeo announced a US$ 1 million assistance for the island and organized a national stakeholders meeting and established a Haiti relief committee, which has managed to raise over GY$60 million in cash and several millions in kind, including food, clothing tents medical supplies and water thus far.

On Friday, cabinet secretary Dr Roger Lunchon said the US$1 million committed by the government will go towards the CARICOM health response initiative.

“Government’s pledge of US$1 million will now be provided to CARICOM to support the financing of the proposed health initiative, concurrent goods, equipment and supplies collected by the committee and other parties in Guyana,” Luncheon told a news conference.

This is apart from the other funds and the other items donated by individual Guyanese, part of which has already been sent to the impoverished Caribbean island. (Caribnet)