- Friday, 20 July 2012 19:53
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MILOT, Haiti (defend.ht) – Micky a retounen. President Michel Martelly chastised the disposition of officials in charge of monuments and historical assets in Haiti after an unsatisfactory assessment of La Citadelle Laferriere.
On this day, the Head of State visited Citadelle Henry Christophe with the Minister of Tourism, Stephanie Balmir Villedrouin, Minister of Culture, Mario Dupuy and the Director of the Institute for the Protection of National Heritage (ISPAN). The purpose of the visit was to assess the state of the national landmark and see what needs to be done to revitalize it.
President Martelly was not impressed. He criticized the administrators of ISPAN for the way they were administrating Haiti’s landmarks.
“Those responsible do not have a plan for the Citadel. They don’t have a plan to protect, to manage it, or to make better… to the contrary, their plan is ‘everyone gets what they can and this thing, it can fall apart, that doesn’t bother me.'”
“That’s what I see here.”
“I’m simply not happy. Before they used to tell you the government doesn’t want to do this doesn’t want to do that… the governments before may not have but right now we have a government that wants to do everything it can.”
“I may not have the means to do everything I can because we just don’t have the money to do everything…”
“…but places that I go, that don’t have power, I put power, places that don’t have roads, I put roads. Places that I go that didn’t have children in school, I put the children in school. Places that I go and I see people living under tents, I take them from under tents.”
“I came to work.”
“Today you can’t blame the government.”
“They [ISPAN] want to blame the government, but who are they? Are they not the government?”
“The people that work here for ISPAN, are they content with trees pushing their way into the Citadel?”
“They come and argue when the budget is being made and say they need money for the Citadel and they don’t do anything.”
“Now something has happened, they called for the President to tell the President to come and look, to come and see, but no one here has anything to say.”
“The President came to look and he sees no one is working. All of them are getting the state’s money and nothing is being done.”
“They want ladders to remove branches that are coming in from the top but what about the ones that I see pushing their way from the bottom. I showed them how many trees are pushing up from ground.”
Martelly asked Minister Dupuy of Culture to take his responsibility with the rebuilding and managing of the Citadel in order to save it. UNESCO, in 2007 declared the Citadel a world heritage monument.