Roundup: American Red Cross faces more suspicion after defending aid program in Haiti

The American Red Cross (ARC) has aroused even more suspicion of its credibility after the relief agency moved to defend its aid program in Haiti.

An independent investigation, conducted jointly by two well-known U.S.-based media organizations -- ProPublica and NPR News, claimed that the ARC has raised nearly 500 million U.S. dollars to help rebuild Haiti in the wake of a major earthquake in 2010, but in the past five years the agency only built six houses in the country.

Faced with suspicion that the ARC may have mismanaged the fund, the relief agency on Friday responded on its official website.

It is true that with 488 million dollars of aid money, the ARC only built six houses, ARC's Chief International Officer David Meltzer said in the online statement.

The original plan had been to develop three communities of new homes but the ARC ran into problems over land ownership disputes, which made obtaining land titles difficult, according to Meltzer.

Therefore, the ARC adopted other accommodation solutions including providing rental subsidies and repairing the damaged houses, Meltzer said.

"The bottom line is that there hasn't been sufficient land available to build new homes - particularly in the most heavily affected areas of Port-au-Prince where people want to live," stated ARC's website.

However, other aid agencies have managed to build thousands of housing units across Haiti though they also ran into similar problems regarding land ownership.

The Canadian Red Cross, for instance, received 222 million dollars in donations to Haiti and earmarked 65 million dollars to housing projects, with which the organization built 7,500 permanent homes for the island nation, according to Canadian media National Post.

Canada circumvented the land ownership issue by constructing houses that could withstand earthquakes and hurricanes but at the same time could be easily dismantled and moved if there were any problems since many families don't own land, the reported quoted Nathan Huculak, spokesman of the Canadian Red Cross, as saying.

The families were also provided with official paperwork to prove the houses belonged to them and were given padlocks and toolkits to carry out repairs, report said.

A total of 1.5 million people were affected by the 2010 earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter Scale. And 79,397 people (around 21,218 families) are still living in camps, according to data released by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The independent investigation also accused the ARC of being slow in its response to a cholera outbreak following the earthquake. The epidemic caused over 6,000 deaths by September 2011.

The Red Cross focused its response to the outbreak on the distribution of soap and oral rehydration salts but, according to the director of the Haiti program's May 2011 memo, the plan was hindered by "internal issues that go unaddressed," which led an internal document to classify the project as "very behind schedule" in September 2011.

After boasting it would "lead the effort in transparency," the ARC has also been criticized for not providing more specific details regarding how exactly the 488 million dollars have been spent. The categories of emergency relief, shelter, health, water and sanitation, among others, are very broad, according to the investigation. The ARC has yet to comment on this.

Since the scandal came out on June 3, people have been taking to social media to voice their opinions on the investigation.

The ARC is "more interested in the PR fallout from this bombshell of a story rather than fixing what this agency needs to address. You might begin by saying you're sorry to the people of Haiti," said Linda Roseberry in response to ARC's blog post '13 Facts about the Red Cross Response in Haiti'.

"Shame on your organization ... it has become an upside down pyramid of bureaucracy," she continued.

People have left comments criticizing the lack of transparency for the ARC's operation in Haiti.

"The lack of specificity in your response is telling. The lack of knowledge of your 'efforts' by the Haitians themselves is galling. The PR response by your organization is soporific, while your internal documents are eye-opening," commented Kevin Wilson.

This is not the first time that the U.S.-based aid agency has been involved in a scandal. Scandals ensued after both 9/11 terror attacks and Hurricane Katrina.

It has been estimated that only 40 million dollars out of the 530 million that were donated after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 were actually given to the families of victims. The rest was put away to invest in the ARC's long-term goals or administrative costs, according to CNN News.

After the hurricane in 2005, 49 people from the ARC were indicted on account of theft. At least 200,000 dollars were taken from the 1.4 billion dollars donated to Katrina victims, according to CBS News. Endi