Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Gov­ern­ment-or­gan­ised aid for earth­quake-strick­en Venezuela will be trans­port­ed by the Galleons Pas­sage to the hard­est hit area of La Guaira soon, pri­vate sec­tor sup­plies leave in few days - and en­er­gy gi­ant Shell has com­mit­ted a US $5 mil­lion dis­as­ter re­lief fund to sup­port re­spons­es and res­cue ef­forts in Venezuela.

In­for­ma­tion came from the re­spec­tive av­enues yes­ter­day, as re­lief ef­forts moved apace fol­low­ing the dev­as­tat­ing dou­ble earth­quakes of 7.2 and 7.5 in mag­ni­tude which shat­tered Venezuela last week.

Yes­ter­day, the death toll was 2,295 with 50,000 miss­ing, 13,000 home­less and 60,000 build­ings dam­aged/de­stroyed. Hard­est hit was Venezuela's north­west, par­tic­u­lar­ly La Guaira port city.

For­mer For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne yes­ter­day not­ed La Guaira was al­so dev­as­tat­ed in 1999 by mud­slides which killed over 10,000.

Brown said eight days af­ter the dis­as­ter, there's been no con­fir­ma­tion of the ar­rival of tan­gi­ble re­lief/sup­plies from Gov­ern­ment.

"That is not good enough in these cir­cum­stances ... Gov­ern­ment's ef­forts need to ac­cel­er­ate. The con­veyance of of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion, lo­gis­tics to make the as­sis­tance hap­pen isn't be­ing treat­ed with the ur­gency these cir­cum­stances re­quire and the sig­nal be­ing re­ceived on the oth­er end may not be the right one in these cir­cum­stances," Browne added.

En­er­gy gi­ant Shell, which ex­pressed deep­est sym­pa­thy to all af­fect­ed, said via state­ment, “Our thoughts are with the fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties who have suf­fered loss, in­jury, and dis­place­ment, in­clud­ing our em­ploy­ees, con­trac­tors, and part­ners in the coun­try, as well as with the emer­gency re­spon­ders work­ing tire­less­ly on the ground.

“Recog­nis­ing the ur­gent hu­man­i­tar­i­an needs, Shell has com­mit­ted (US)$5 mil­lion in dis­as­ter re­lief fund­ing to sup­port re­sponse and re­cov­ery ef­forts.”

The con­tri­bu­tion will be de­liv­ered through the World Food Pro­gramme (WFP) and se­lect­ed lo­cal hu­man­i­tar­i­an part­ners. Fund­ing will sup­port crit­i­cal ar­eas such as emer­gency food sup­port, ac­cess to es­sen­tial sup­plies, and im­me­di­ate re­lief for vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

"We are deeply sad­dened by the im­pact of these earth­quakes on the peo­ple of Venezuela," said Adam Low­mass, pres­i­dent, Shell Venezuela.

"Our pri­or­i­ty is to help those af­fect­ed, and we are work­ing with trust­ed hu­man­i­tar­i­an part­ners to de­liv­er ur­gent re­lief where it is need­ed most. We're hon­ored to sup­port the peo­ple of Venezuela as com­mu­ni­ties be­gin the dif­fi­cult process of re­cov­ery."

Shell is T&T’s part­ner in the planned Drag­on Gas and Man­a­tee projects whose re­sources lie in Venezuela’s wa­ters.

Blue Wa­ters send­ing sup­plies

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers didn’t re­ply to Guardian Me­dia queries on when the aid Gov­ern­ment is or­gan­is­ing would de­part for Venezuela; or on Browne's view that not enough was be­ing done.

How­ev­er, oth­er Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials con­firmed the aid will be sent "soon" via the Galleons Pas­sage ves­sel. It will sail to La Guaira, the hard­est hit area. Do­na­tion col­lec­tion point is at Point Lisas.

Com­pa­nies send­ing sup­plies in that ef­fort in­clude Blue Wa­ters, whose wa­ter do­na­tions were sent Tues­day and will con­tin­ue, of­fi­cials added.

In a sep­a­rate ef­fort, Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said sup­plies, in­clud­ing from a South Trinidad su­per­mar­ket chain - food, wa­ter, dry goods, non-per­ish­ables, mat­tress­es - will be sent in a few days via boat.

Op­po­si­tion PNM Wel­fare of­fi­cer Max­ine Richards said the par­ty's col­lec­tion dri­ve is on from Mon­day to mon­thend. Items de­posit­ed at PNM's PoS and Ch­agua­nas of­fices will be sent via air and sea.

The Pres­by­ter­ian Church's head of­fice con­firmed it's co-or­di­nat­ing aid via the FCB bank ac­count opened for do­na­tions, Venezuela's Em­bassy and mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions.

Liv­ing Wa­ters con­firmed col­lect­ing items. That ef­fort is al­so sep­a­rate to Gov­ern­ment's and is be­ing or­gan­ised with Venezuela's Catholic church­es and Car­i­tas In­ter­na­tion­al, a glob­al RC or­gan­i­sa­tion which will trans­port items by next week.

Govt con­tri­bu­tion need­ed - Browne

PNM's Browne called for Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er de­clar­ing a na­tion­al day of mourn­ing and sol­i­dar­i­ty with Venezuela; and for Gov­ern­ment to make a fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tion to Venezuela, not just by open­ing the ac­count and not nec­es­sar­i­ly as large as $1 bil­lion.

He rec­om­mend­ed do­nat­ing field hos­pi­tals.

Browne has sug­gest­ed im­me­di­ate ac­cel­er­a­tion of con­veyance of re­lief/sup­port and work with mi­grant groups, re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions, NGOs and the TTMA to raise ad­di­tion­al sup­port, since in­suf­fi­cient work was done in that re­gard.

More al­so needs to be done to pre­pare T&T for sim­i­lar fu­ture dis­as­ters, he said.

Browne said Cari­com has dis­tin­guished it­self with im­me­di­ate aid to Venezue­lans. He list­ed as­sis­tance from Bar­ba­dos, St Kitts/Nevis, Do­mini­ca, An­tigua and Guyana. Not­ing T&T's con­spic­u­ous ab­sence from act­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Ro­driguez's thank you replies, he said it "could be" that the T&T Prime Min­is­ter's state­ment on aid, which held many pro­vi­sos, was not of the cal­i­bre and in­ten­si­ty re­quired.

Stress­ing in­suf­fi­cient work was done by Gov­ern­ment, Browne rec­om­mend­ed the Prime Min­is­ter hold a me­dia con­fer­ence on the is­sue, the way Guyana's PM did along­side Guyana's pri­vate sec­tor.

"We're not say­ing that to make Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar feel bad, as she should, but it's an ex­am­ple of the type of states­man­ship that's ex­pect­ed and de­mand­ed of a neigh­bour­ing coun­try giv­en the scope of this dis­as­ter... in this apoc­a­lyp­tic sce­nario, giv­en the er­rors com­mit­ted by T&T re­gard­ing Venezuela, these are the ges­tures that can make a dif­fer­ence," he said.

On Yese­nia Gon­za­les call to halt de­por­ta­tions, Browne said Gov­ern­ment should re­frain from in­creas­ing Venezuela's bur­dens.