A new Haitian government lead by Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe officially began its duties Wednesday, capping a months-long political vacuum in the troubled nation.
President Michel Martelly, in office for a year, had lacked a cabinet chief since Garry Connille resigned a February.
Lamothe, 39, says he is basing his government policies on fighting extreme poverty and protecting the environment.
“I am asking the government team to get to work immediately in order to satisfy the population and improve its living conditions,” he said.
Immediately after the inauguration, Lamothe and Martelly led the first cabinet meeting held at the presidential palace destroyed in a devastating January 2010 earthquake.
“Each ministry must have a website and a constant presence on social networks in order to lead transparently and to inform the population of decisions,” said the prime minister, rarely seen without a tablet computer.
“All of my cabinet ministers will share information via Twitter, Facebook and the Internet,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
There are 22 ministers, including seven women, sitting on the new cabinet.
Lamothe received a political science degree from Barry University in Miami and earned an MBA at St Thomas University in Florida. Known as a keen sportsman, he played tennis for Haiti in the Davis Cup.
He became foreign minister in Martelly's government in October.
The Martelly administration is trying to ramp up stalled reconstruction efforts following the 2010 earthquake that flattened large parts of Port-au-Prince and damaged much of the south of the country.
The magnitude 7.0 quake killed 250 000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands in a nation that was already the poorest country in the Americas. According to UN figures, the quake killed, injured or displaced one in six of the Caribbean nation's entire population of almost 10 million. - Sapa-AFP