PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Four weeks after an earthquake shattered its capital, Haiti remains in a precarious situation with no clear idea of how to house 1 million people living in the streets, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said on Tuesday.
Bellerive said it could take his impoverished Caribbean nation three or four years to return to its pre-quake state and up to 10 years to rebuild 250,000 houses destroyed by the magnitude 7 earthquake on January 12.
Planning for shelters and new homes is not far along and the number of spontaneous tent encampments around the city -- where most Haitians are living under plastic tarps or cloth bedsheets -- has grown to nearly 500, Bellerive said.
"We are still in a very difficult situation," Bellerive told Reuters. "We still don't have a clear vision of certain problems -- how we are going to relocate all those people."
Bellerive, an economist who became prime minister only two months before the quake, said conditions are improving in some areas, with better food distribution and better health services.
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