| "No free zones on Maribahoux Plain. What it needs is irrigation."
Port-au-Prince, 13 January 2003 - At a press conference in Port-au-Prince, the Pitobert Farmers' Defence Committee (KDP) vigourously denounced the contract signed between the Haitian government and the Dominican industrialist, Fernando Capellan, for the mid-January construction of a free zone on the fertile Plain of Maribahoux in the north-east of the country. Faced with a mobilisation campaign against the project, the Aristide-Neptune government had let it be understood that another site would be found instead of Pitobert. But, this was only a manoeuvre according to the KDP which confirmed that the new site chosen, Nan Kakawo, is on the most fertile part of the Maribahoux Plain. The Farmers' Defence Committee of Pitobert protests that the government had negotiated on the sly with Capellen while the propulation's attention was focused on the question of vehicle fuel at the end of the year 2002. The KDP renewed its foremost demand: "No free zones on Maribahoux Plain. What it needs is irrigation." Source: Groupe d'Appui aux Rapatries et Refugies (GARR) (translated from French by Charles Arthur for the Haiti Support Group)
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