PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti ? One of the most visible symbols of Haiti's earthquake will soon be dismantled as officials relocate nearly 20,000 people from a tent camp outside the collapsed National Palace, the government said Wednesday.
President Michel Martelly said Canada would help move the residents from the Champ de Mars plaza to new homes north of the capital. He said the operation would begin in six weeks.
"You've been here for two years, suffering without talking, with the kids," Martelly told a crowd of about a 1,000 onlookers who applauded the news a day before the quake's second anniversary. "We are going to remove everyone from under the tents."
Canada's government is providing $19.9 million over two years to finance the resettlement of the camp dwellers.
Canadian Minister of International Cooperation Beverley Oda said the project will also help train 50 Haitian entrepreneurs and create 2,000 jobs for removing debris and rebuilding and repairing homes.
Sandy Pascal, a student who has lived in the public park with her parents since the day after the quake, welcomed the announcement.
"If my parents had money we would've found a place already," Pascal, 21, said. "I hope to leave as soon as possible."
The government is building 400 homes near the bay and 3,000 more at the bottom of a mountain also north of the capital to house the camp's residents.
The earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010, killed an estimated 300,000 people and displaced 1.5 million more. Officials say the number of people now without homes has dropped to about 550,000.
Government officials and foreign aid workers have spent this week touting their accomplishments in the two years since the disaster, but some Haitians say they have see very little progress.
Several thousand people marched through downtown Port-au-Prince on Wednesday to protest what they say is a lack of housing.
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