Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Act­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez has thanked Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for Trinidad & To­ba­go’s as­sis­tance to earth­quake-rav­aged Venezuela, say­ing the dis­as­ter has reaf­firmed that “the path be­tween na­tions is sol­i­dar­i­ty.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in turn, pledged T&T’s con­tin­ued sup­port and said she looked for­ward to part­ner­ing with Venezuela’s in­ter­im Gov­ern­ment as the coun­try re­cov­ers from the dev­as­tat­ing June 24 earth­quakes.

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) yes­ter­day re­leased the ex­change of let­ters be­tween the two lead­ers. Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s cor­re­spon­dence al­so ref­er­enced a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with Ro­dríguez on June 26 and an ear­li­er let­ter sent on June 29.

The OPM said T&T and Venezuela had reaf­firmed their bonds of sol­i­dar­i­ty fol­low­ing the twin earth­quakes, mea­sur­ing 7.2 and 7.5 in mag­ni­tude.

As of yes­ter­day, Venezuela’s Na­tion­al As­sem­bly Pres­i­dent Jorge Ro­dríguez said the death toll had climbed to near­ly 5,000. Some 16,740 peo­ple were re­port­ed in­jured, 17,907 left home­less and 20,857 were shel­ter­ing in 106 tem­po­rary camps. Au­thor­i­ties al­so re­port­ed dam­age to 856 build­ings, in­clud­ing 190 to­tal struc­tur­al col­laps­es, while 6,462 peo­ple had been res­cued from dis­as­ter zones.

Yes­ter­day, the OPM re­leased Ro­dríguez’s Ju­ly 8 let­ter, which was trans­mit­ted through the Venezue­lan Em­bassy to the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs.

Ro­dríguez wrote: “I have the ho­n­our of ad­dress­ing you, on be­half of the peo­ple and Gov­ern­ment of the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela, to ex­press our most sin­cere grat­i­tude for your heart­felt words of con­do­lence and the ex­pres­sions of sol­i­dar­i­ty fol­low­ing the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quakes that af­fect­ed our coun­try.”

She added: “These demon­stra­tions of sup­port have been a bea­con of hope in times of sor­row and reaf­firm that the path be­tween na­tions is sol­i­dar­i­ty. We trust that the re­silience of the Venezue­lan peo­ple, to­geth­er with the en­cour­ag­ing voic­es of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, will al­low us to move for­ward with re­newed strength to­ward the re­cov­ery and well-be­ing of every af­fect­ed fam­i­ly.”

In her re­sponse, Per­sad-Bisses­sar thanked Ro­dríguez for her Ju­ly 8 let­ter and for ac­knowl­edg­ing the sup­port ex­tend­ed by the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of T&T.

The Prime Min­is­ter re­called their June 26 tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion, dur­ing which she ad­vised that T&T had ac­ti­vat­ed a ma­jor pub­lic-pri­vate hu­man­i­tar­i­an re­lief ini­tia­tive for Venezuela. She said she was pleased the first ship­ment of more than 230 tonnes of re­lief sup­plies had ar­rived on Ju­ly 10.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said the Gov­ern­ment was col­lab­o­rat­ing with the rel­e­vant Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties to fa­cil­i­tate the ship­ment of re­quest­ed vac­cines to Venezuela via Caribbean Air­lines (CAL).

Re­fer­ring to Venezuela as T&T’s clos­est neigh­bour, Per­sad-Bisses­sar wrote: “Venezuela oc­cu­pies a spe­cial place in our re­gion and in our hearts. Please be as­sured the T&T Gov­ern­ment will al­ways stand ready to sup­port the peo­ple of Venezuela when­ev­er they are con­front­ed by nat­ur­al dis­as­ters or hu­man­i­tar­i­an chal­lenges re­quir­ing as­sis­tance.”

“In mo­ments of ad­ver­si­ty, our shared ge­og­ra­phy, his­to­ry and ties of friend­ship call up­on us to act with com­pas­sion, sol­i­dar­i­ty and prac­ti­cal sup­port,” she added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her Gov­ern­ment re­mained “deeply com­mit­ted to work­ing close­ly with you and your Gov­ern­ment to en­sure that Venezuela emerges from this tragedy stronger than ever, and that the bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship be­tween our two coun­tries con­tin­ues to grow and pros­per.”

She con­clud­ed by say­ing the Gov­ern­ment looked for­ward to part­ner­ing with Venezuela’s in­ter­im Gov­ern­ment “in the in­ter­ests of the peo­ple of both na­tions.”