THAT leaders of the Inter-American system meeting in Port of Spain on Sunday agreed, once again, to consider particular assistance to one of its more distressed members, Haiti, is again to be taken note of.

Raising the issue anew when he addressed the closing ceremony for the Summit of the Americas, Prime Minister Patrick Manning said it came about as a result of ’a presentation’ made to the leaders gathered by the Haitian President Rene Preval.

He said the situation on the ground in Haiti was one that nobody in the region could be proud of.

’It is not our concern how this situation came about, or how it did not come about,’ Mr Manning said. ’The fact of the matter is that it exists and none of us could feel comfortable, however rich, or however poor we might be.’

Among the factors contributing to that terrible situation, he said, was a significant budget shortfall, rising double-digit inflation and a slowdown in remittances. Four hurricanes in recent years had severely battered the island of which Haiti is but half, killing hundreds of people and causing damage to the tune of more than a US$ 1 billion, the Prime Minister reminded his audience.

Quoting calypso poet David Rudder, the St Vincent Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves, said it was a case once more of Haiti we are sorry. Except, he said, it was time to ’go beyond sorrow to address these things concretely.’

It is the start of a process, he said, referring to the decision to consider the matter more fully when the leaders next meet at a meeting of the Organisation of American States in June.

But strictly speaking, this effort is less than brand new. In the teeth of the contentious ouster of Jean Bertrand Aristide in February 2004, Caricom leaders meeting in St Kitts had announced the establishment of a Caricom Task Force, even as it resolved to suspend communication with the interim administration that had been put together there.

Nothing much happened in the two years between then and the elections which brought President Preval back to office in February 2006.

For all intents and purposes, the Task Force was re-energised under leadership of the experienced Guyana-born diplomat and former broadcaster Hugh Cholmondeley.

Any consideration of a fresh initiative to provide much needed assistance to the ever resilient people of Haiti must start with an unvarnished assessment of those efforts.

They come also, on top of on-going efforts by ordinary citizens and groups, including some in this country, to bolster consciousness about the plight of the people.

One such is an effort to be launched later this month by a group called ’But Is there No Cause’, to which this country has committed some assistance.

Reginald Dumas, the distinguished Trinidad and Tobago diplomat who was Special Adviser on Haiti to the United Nations Secretary General during the turbulent period of the Aristide ouster, has agreed to lend his prestige to this effort. More about this effort will be disclosed in the coming days.