Haitian protesters trade food riots for jobs

By Joseph Guyler Delva and Tom Brown

LES CAYES, Haiti (Reuters) - The demonstrators who ignited last month's violent protests against rising food prices in Haiti have accepted U.S.-sponsored jobs rather than follow through on a threat to launch new riots in the impoverished Caribbean country.

The protesters in Les Cayes, a southern city where five people were killed in clashes with U.N. peacekeepers in April, had vowed to take to the streets again by Monday if parliament failed to ratify a new prime minister to replace Jacques Edouard Alexis, who was fired by the Senate on April 12.

With shovels and rakes in hand as they cleaned dusty streets and drainage ditches in a sprawling Les Cayes slum on Tuesday, protest leaders said they had entered into a shaky truce with the government but warned that violence could erupt again soon.

"We want housing, government-sponsored community restaurants and stores, professional schools and health centres," said one, a man of about 20 who gave his name only as Charles.

"The situation has not changed yet," he added, saying the temporary jobs handed out by the mayor's office and bankrolled by the U.S. Agency for International Development, had fallen far short of the protesters' demands and would only buy peace for a short period of time.

Only 40 protesters have been hired as street cleaners. But their wages of about $4 (2.06 pounds) per day are more than double the daily average wage in the poorest country in the Americas.

"They try to buy us off when they distribute food and create a few jobs ... but this will not solve the problems. We'll take to the streets again as long as our demands are not met," said Charlemagne Bien-Aime.

The protest leaders, who gather regularly in a tree-shaded cemetery in the La Savane slum, said on May 5 that Haiti's lawmakers and President Rene Preval had one week to install a new prime minister to start addressing their demands.