2004News

Jimani returns to obscurity

Diario Libre reports from Jimani, the southwestern town devastated by flash flooding in May this year. Jimani, it says, has returned to its former status as a “forgotten town on the Haitian border” that has been neglected by the government. Several survivors of the disaster told the newspaper that they have been abandoned, underscoring the lack of a potable water system and the loss of arable lands where they used to grow foods like cassava, corn and plantains for basic subsistence and for sale at the frontier. A farmer quoted in the article says that no one from the Agriculture Ministry has appeared on the scene to survey the losses and assess the farmers’ needs, and that his family survives on the occasional handouts of rice and tinned sardine