By Damien Cave
c. New York Times News Service
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — After two weeks of often-chaotic food distribution, the United Nations announced plans on Saturday for a new coupon-based system that aims to give rice to 10,000 Haitians a day at each of 16 locations around Port-au-Prince.
The new program — with the first coupons delivered Saturday, and food on Sunday — ends what officials described as the “quick and dirty” initial phase of emergency response, but it is also an admission of what Haitians have been saying for days: that the system had become a failure.
Food giveaways, which began with little trouble after the earthquake, have recently devolved into blood sport as day after day trucks ran out of food before long lines of people were served. In a few cases, aid workers protected by only a few police officers were overrun by thousands of Haitians, as men with muscular arms stampeded children and reached beyond barriers to grab what they could.
In other cases, United Nations troops have resorted to tear gas and warning shots, followed by a quick escape before they could hand out all of the food.
Marcus Prior, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program, said the new effort aimed to bring distribution back under control. “It’s a unique response to a unique situation,” he told reporters at a news conference here. “We need to stabilize the food supply.”
Over the next 15 days, Mr. Prior said, aid groups and United Nations workers will go into neighborhoods and distribute coupons that allow each family to receive a single 55-pound bag of rice. A similar coupon system has been in place for about a week at some of the smaller tent camps, for instance, on the lawn of the Prime Minister’s office, where the German Red Cross gives out food twice a day.
And generally, in these areas, the system has worked — with some shoving, but mostly order.
The United Nations plan, though, will attract much larger crowds.
Mr. Prior said American and United Nation troops would provide security when the food is given out, but it was not clear how many soldiers would be assigned to each location. In another effort to keep the giveaways calm, he said that only women would allowed to collect the rice, though they can have family members help them carry it.
Food will be driven to the sites at night, to avoid two other obstacles: traffic and organized theft. United Nations officials said that at least one truckload of food was robbed in recent days by an organized gang of men on motorbikes.
Mr. Prior, in an interview, said he was “realistic” about the many challenges that continue to confront food distribution. Inevitably, there would be attempts to counterfeit the coupons, which officials are combating by using multiple colors and stamps so they cannot simply be photocopied. Women “in principle,” he said, would be the focus — a tacit admission that men would probably find a way in as well.
But if the new locations work out, United Nations officials said they may also be used for other forms of aid, such as tents or medical supplies.
“What this operation will allow us to do is put in place a distribution infrastructure, a stable distribution infrastructure, that will allow us not only to reach more people more quickly,” Mr. Prior said. “It will put in place a distribution system that we can depend upon over the coming weeks and months.”
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