Haitian Beatz

PORT-AU-PRINCE – Government plans to relocate hundreds of thousands of Haitians out of makeshift camps to new temporary shelters have been greeted with suspicion by a disorientated and destitute

population.

An estimated one million people were left homeless two weeks ago by the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti, the worst natural disaster on record anywhere in the Americas.

There has already been an exodus of more than 235,000 people, roughly one in 10, from the decimated capital. Port-au-Prince had accounted for some 60 percent of the country's wealth prior to the January 12 quake.

"I'm not going to Croix des Bouquets or anywhere for that matter," said Martine Desir, 24, referring to a new temporary community being set up by the government some 15 kilometers (nine miles) outside the capital.

Desir lives with her family
, nine in all, in the Champ de Mars. The landmark gardens in front of Haiti's presidential palace have been transformed since the quake into a dreadful slum.

Survivors have turned every bit of green space available, from public parks to elite golf courses, into squalid tent cities as they subside in cramped and humiliating conditions.

Others sleep by the rubble where their houses once stood in a bid to protect their meager belongings from looters desperate for anything they can find to sell for food or water.

The Champ de Mars is one of the first places the government wants to clear to places like Croix des Bouquets, which it is styling as a mini-village initially intended to house up to 20,000 survivors.

Haitian Health Minister Alex Larsen, warning of the high risk of disease spreading in the unsanitary conditions faced in the camps, has urged survivors to relocate.