Audit of USAID"s disaster assistance to Haiti

In the emergency food assistance program, USAID authorized 58,000 MTs of food to be distributed through 3 PVOs, with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) targeting poor urban children, their families, and victims of Tropical Storm Gordon; Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) focusing on maternal and child health and food-for-work activities; and CARE focusing on isolated regions of northwestern Haiti, families of poor children, and pregnant and lactating women. Due to an overly ambitious program design and a variety of logistical and security problems, some of them related to the 10/94 governmental transition, the program missed its food delivery and beneficiary targets. The problems were worse at the outset, but the situation began to stabilize in 1995, enabling the project to reach an estimated 474,000 beneficiaries, or 84% of the target of 584,500. In the disaster assistance program, USAID awarded seven grants totaling $5.4 million to non-governmental and international organizations for disaster relief, including emergency fuel importation, vaccinations, and humanitarian supplies. The principal grant, a $2.3 million award to CRS in 9/94, was to mitigate further deterioration of conditions for small farmers and poor urban dwellers due to the United Nations" economic embargo imposed on Haiti in 5/94. CRS distributed 518 MTs of seeds, 455 MTs of fertilizer, and 65,000 tools to 47 peasant associations, reaching an estimated 65,00 farm families. CRS was able to distribute only 25% of the planned medicines, however. This was due to delays in hiring personnel and training health workers, and in procuring and delivering medicines. USAID/Haiti was unaware of these implementation problems, since it was not provided progress reports either by CRS or by the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) in Washington, which, due to unclear Agency guidelines, was monitoring the grant. Overall, program management generally followed Agency regulations. Exceptions are as follows. (1) ADRA failed to maintain verifiable performance data. Auditors were unable to recompute, trace to supporting documentation, or otherwise verify reported beneficiary levels of ADRA"s $5.1 million emergency food program. Although this program was recently completed, the deficiency continues to affect ADRA"s ongoing non-emergency food program. (2) The PVOs frequently failed to file claims for marine losses of food commodities, as required by Regulation 11. This was due to the fact that neither the PVOs nor USAID/Haiti maintained effective management controls for monitoring and following up on commodity losses. Consequently, USAID lacked assurance that restitution claims for commodity losses were properly filed and that amounts collected for inland losses were remitted to USAID. However, corrective steps are underway. (3) USAID/Haiti needs to improve its food monitoring system. The overall objectives, responsibilities, and specific procedures of the Mission"s food monitoring unit are undocumented, and the significant amount of data gathered on program implementation at the recipient level have never been analyzed to measure program effectiveness. Further, while the Mission instructs PVOs to take corrective actions on problems identified at a particular food center, it has no assurance that the PVOs have acted. USAID/Haiti and the OFDA generally agreed with audit conclusions and recommendations, and are taking steps to implement them.