PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The armored SUV makes its way up Avenue John Paul II in Haiti’s teeming capital when Denis O’Brien, the Irish billionaire who built the largest cellphone company here and controls the lion’s share of the Caribbean mobile phone market, leans forward and peers out of the passenger side rear window.
“Everybody is working. All of these people have small stalls,” he says, as vehicles slow to a crawl, whizzing motorcycles cut through traffic and he turns his attention to the myriad of sidewalk vendors off to the side.
“Look at this woman here with the basket on her head, trying to eke out a living,” O’Brien says. “How hard is that? What sort of work is that to do everyday, to fund your family? She might be making a couple of dollars a day too and then you have food inflation and you have people who are probably trying to steal from her. Her own safety, going home wherever she lives.”
