Ghanaians are without doubt found to be living everywhere on this planet, as it has been indicated that a Ghanaian resident in Haiti might have perished in that country�s �apocalyptic� earthquake.
A close relative of the Ghanaian sojourner Francis Ochetre-Minta, who lives in Accra but hails from Dominase in the Central Region, named his cousin as Joshua Ezra-Essel whom he said had lived in the Caribbean Island for about 12 years.
The relative said in an interview that when the news about the tragic incident occurred, he anxiously made efforts to contact his cousin on the phone but all efforts proved futile; and till date he had not been able to make any further contact or locate the whereabouts of his cousin, raising fears among family members that he might have died in the earth crumbling disaster.
According to him, he knew little about his cousin�s work on the Island, but insisted that he believed he cousin (lived) a decent life and was even making remittances occasionally to some family members. He observed also that, his cousin had informed him about a sizable number of African nationals on the Island particularly from West Africa.
Meanwhile, all attempts to contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration for confirmation on the number of Ghanaians living in Hiati and the possible loss of lives in the catastrophic earthquake hit the wall. This reporter dialed two numbers in an effort to get official response on the matter but the calls were not answered, although all of them went through.
Moreover, the current death toll in the Hiati earthquake is said to be a �reasonable assumption� of 200,000. The BBC reported yesterday that an American General in Haiti Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, said �it was too early to know the full human loss,� whiles rescuers pulled more people from the rubbles at the weekend, with at least 70,000 people have already been buried.
Gen. Keen when asked about the death toll estimated between 150,000 and 200,000 people said: �I think the international community is looking at those figures and I think that�s a starts point�. �Clearly, this is a disaster of epic proportion, and we�ve got a lot of work ahead of us,� he told the BBC. Amid the chaos and destruction, a number of people were rescued from collapsed buildings at the weekend.
Among the lucky ones was a seven-year-old girl pulled alive from the ruins of a supermarket. At the UN headquarters destroyed in the earthquake, rescuers lifted a Danish staff member alive from the wreckage; just 15 minutes after the UN secretary general visited the site. And US teams with search dogs also found and rescued a 16-year-old Dominican girl trapped for five days in a small, three-storey hotel.
While hopes dim with every passing day, a South African rescue official, Collin Diner, also told the BBC he hoped there would be more. �What we are seeing is that the buildings have a whole lot of openings, collapsed voids and things, and that always gives you a better opportunity. �We�ve got so many people killed and so many people trapped, the chances of some of them still being alive is pretty good.�
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