* More than half a million still living in tent camps
* Disagreements over aid continue two years after quake
* Creating jobs, building homes among myriad of challenges
By Kevin Gray and Joseph Guyler Delva
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 10 (Reuters) - If there is hope in Haiti, it can be found in Mertilus Aland.
The 18-year-old eight-grader is flourishing in a new school built after Haiti&${esc.hash}39;s devastating earthquake, dreaming of one day becoming a doctor in the violent Haitian slum he calls home.
"Who knows where I&${esc.hash}39;d be if it wasn&${esc.hash}39;t for this place," he said.
Bankrolled by a roster of Hollywood celebrities, the Academy of Peace and Justice is Haiti&${esc.hash}39;s first free secondary school and draws hundreds of children from Port-au-Prince&${esc.hash}39;s biggest slums.
Its success stands out in Haiti, which is still struggling to lift itself from the rubble left by an earthquake two years ago that killed roughly 300,000 people and left more than 1.5 million homeless.
Despite billions of dollars pledged by donors to help Haiti rebuild, reconstruction efforts remain painstakingly slow, with only incipient signs some progress may be taking hold.
The recovery effort, one of the world&${esc.hash}39;s biggest humanitarian and reconstruction operations involving more than 12,000 aid groups, has faced intense criticism that the international aid community has been too slow to shift gears from emergency aid to helping develop one of the world&${esc.hash}39;s poorest countries.
The dusty streets of the Haitian capital offer a glimpse of the work that remains. More than a half a million people still live in a critical situation in crowded tent camps, many without running water or electricity.
Few new or renovated buildings can be seen. And throngs of Haitians line the streets every day in a jarring reminder that 70 percent of the population is either unemployed or underemployed.
"It&${esc.hash}39;s been two years and I&${esc.hash}39;m still here in the camps," said Jerome Mezil, a 28-year-old who lives in the Sainte-Therese tent camp in the capital&${esc.hash}39;s Petionville district.
Some tent camp dwellers say they fear life outside the camps will be even tougher.
"I&${esc.hash}39;m worried when I leave, I&${esc.hash}39;ll be totally forgotten," said Margalie Theano, 40, standing amid shelters made with bed sheets, tarps and cardboard in a downtown plaza.
Most Haitians agree the huge influx in aid, much of it from foreign governments and international aid organizations, that poured in after the Jan. 12, 2010 quake helped to save thousands of lives.
But many worry not enough is now being done to provide Haitians with jobs and address deeply-rooted problems like education that could help Haiti begin to shed its image as a basket case of crushing poverty and underdevelopment.
"The most important thing for me right now is finding work," said Martella Antoine, a 32-year-old mother of two in a tent camp just blocks from the presidential palace. She lost her job as a store clerk when the building where she worked was leveled in the quake.
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There are, however, signs of tepid progress.
More than half of the rubble that once clogged much of the Port-au-Prince&${esc.hash}39;s streets has been cleared. Haiti&${esc.hash}39;s battered infrastructure received a boost with the completion of new roads linking the country&${esc.hash}39;s north and south with the capital of Port-au-Prince.
And this week the government will inaugurate a university donated by its neighbor, the Dominican Republic. A new U.S.-funded, 320-bed medical training facility in Mirebalais, a small rural settlement an hour&${esc.hash}39;s drive north of the capital, is also nearly complete.
But international aid and Haitian officials acknowledge aid problems still persist.
"The aid is too scattered, there is a lack of coordination ... and the aid does not sufficiently meet the priorities of the government or the international community," Prime Minister Gary Conille told Reuters recently.
Cecilia Millan, Oxfam&${esc.hash}39;s country director in Haiti, said the two-year anniversary "must be a call to action" and lamented an "apparent slowness of reconstruction."
The recovery effort was hobbled from the start by a Haitian government accused of failing to assert its leadership after the tragedy. Long wary of chronic government corruption in Haiti, many nongovernmental organizations and aid donors also began to set their own priorities, often with little coordination.
A cholera outbreak that has sickened more than half a million people and killed more than 7,000 since October 2010, along with a disputed presidential election and a political crisis that deprived Haitian President Michel Martelly of a working government for months have complicated the recovery.
In an address to parliament on Monday, Martelly laid out Haiti&${esc.hash}39;s stark reality: more than 8 million people live without electricity, 5 million are illiterate and 8 out of 10 Haitians live on less than ${esc.dollar}2 a day.
Housing for the hundreds of thousands made homeless by the quake remains a crucial issue.
Although the number of tent camps has fallen, it has not translated into new, permanent housing for many.
Thousands of quake victims have been relocated after accepting cash and other assistance from aid groups. But many face a jobless future and Vincent Cochetel, regional representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said countless tent camps have been dismantled through forced and sometimes violent evictions of homeless people by powerful landowners seeking to reclaim their property.
"TIME BOMBS"
"It&${esc.hash}39;s not because they&${esc.hash}39;re no longer in camps that a solution has been found for those people. They remain displaced," Cochetel told journalists on a conference call last week.
He said many of these people had moved on to live in densely packed slums, like one with an estimated population of 90,000 that has sprouted around Corail-Cesselesse, a planned community for quake survivors north of Port-au-Prince.
"They are time bombs for the future," Cochetel said.
How to get Haitians working in a country where more than half the annual budget comes from international aid is among the myriad challenges.
"The best resource Haiti has right now are its people, but there has been very little investment in them," said Joceyln McCalla, a leading Haitian-American development consultant.
Some 300,000 Haitians have found temporary work in construction and rubble clearing, said Jessica Faieta, the U.N. Development Program&${esc.hash}39;s senior country director for Haiti. But there is little prospect for more permanent jobs.
Haiti&${esc.hash}39;s tiny economic elite, which controls a large swath of the economy, is only "slowly" beginning to help, said Denis O&${esc.hash}39;Brien, chairman of the Irish-owned telecommunications company Digicel, which is Haiti&${esc.hash}39;s biggest foreign investor.
Questions also hang over how the government will be able to coordinate aid efforts going forward.
The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, a body created to help direct aid and co-chaired by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, ended in October when Haitian lawmakers allowed its mandate to expire. Martelly has signaled he would like to extend it, but it is unclear if there is support in parliament where some lawmakers voiced concern not enough Haitians were included.
Mark Schneider, a senior vice president at the International Crisis Group, warned that restoring the body was a key step for the government. "That needs to be done," he said. "You need a mechanism for donors to deliver money to projects. It gives more confidence."
McCalla said Haitians also needed to do more to engage donors and influence the direction of aid efforts.
"Part of the problem is there is a lack of cooperation among Haitians themselves, who should be able to say &${esc.hash}39;These are the people who know how to get things done and these are the people you should be talking to,&${esc.hash}39;" he said
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