Aid convoys being assembled for Venezuela quake relief operation

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­[email protected]

Re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions across Trinidad and To­ba­go are co­or­di­nat­ing a na­tion­wide re­lief ef­fort to as­sist com­mu­ni­ties in Venezuela af­fect­ed by a re­cent earth­quake, with emer­gency sup­plies be­ing col­lect­ed, sort­ed and pre­pared for ship­ment.

The ini­tia­tive, led through the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, brings to­geth­er do­na­tions from non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions, pri­vate busi­ness­es and mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen said emer­gency man­age­ment teams with­in re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions are cur­rent­ly pro­cess­ing and pack­ag­ing the re­lief items for trans­port.

Speak­ing dur­ing a vis­it to the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit in Wood­brook, Ameen said the con­sign­ments in­clude food, san­i­ta­tion and med­ical sup­plies in­tend­ed to meet ur­gent hu­man­i­tar­i­an needs.

“We have box­es packed with canned foods, a lot of ba­by di­a­pers, san­i­tary nap­kins, ba­by wipes and a lot of some med­ical things like ban­dages and plas­ters and gauze and so on. And we al­so have cas­es of wa­ter,” she said.

Ameen stressed that all items were do­nat­ed, not­ing con­tri­bu­tions from NGOs, small busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als.

“All of these things were do­nat­ed, some by NGOs, some by small busi­ness­es and some by in­di­vid­u­als,” she said.

She said teams are pre-sort­ing and la­belling items to en­sure ef­fi­cient dis­tri­b­u­tion once they ar­rive in Venezuela.

“They have la­belled these items in Eng­lish and Span­ish. They have al­so packed buck­ets with items in them, dry foods, canned foods, pow­dered milk, and so on. And this is easy for us to give to an in­di­vid­ual, it’s easy to ship, and we are do­ing this in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Se­wa TT. So we have over 1,000 buck­ets that are pack­aged,” Ameen said.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, all sup­plies will be trans­port­ed to the PLIPDE­CO ware­house for pal­letis­ing be­fore ship­ment. The ves­sel Galleons Pas­sage is ex­pect­ed to car­ry the re­lief con­sign­ment to Venezuela on Fri­day.

“We would want to close off by Wednes­day be­cause we want to pack­age every­thing. The items that we have now have been pack­aged, so any do­na­tions be­tween to­day and Wednes­day will be pack­aged on Wednes­day to get down to PLIPDE­CO and be ready for ship­ping on Fri­day,” she said.

In ad­di­tion to phys­i­cal do­na­tions, Ameen said fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tions can be made to the Venezuela Dis­as­ter Re­lief Fund ac­count at First Cit­i­zens Bank.

She said the re­sponse is be­ing guid­ed by a spe­cif­ic list of re­quest­ed items pro­vid­ed through the Venezue­lan Em­bassy, and fur­ther as­sis­tance will de­pend on ad­di­tion­al re­quests from Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties.

“If there is need for any fur­ther re­lief, they will in­deed in­di­cate to us,” she said. “I am cer­tain with the con­tin­ued com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the pop­u­la­tion will be up­dat­ed.”

Ameen al­so ad­dressed con­cerns re­gard­ing ar­rears owed to re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion work­ers, as­sur­ing that there are no is­sues with the pay­ment of wages and salaries.

“I want to give the as­sur­ance to the pub­lic and to all re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion work­ers, there is no is­sue with work­ers and their pay,” she said.

She fur­ther crit­i­cised what she de­scribed as poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion from some op­po­si­tion-con­trolled re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, sug­gest­ing that de­lays in rais­ing con­cerns were con­tribut­ing to ad­min­is­tra­tive frus­tra­tions.

“Some­times PNM cor­po­ra­tions, be­cause of pet­ty pol­i­tics, they don’t reach out and say, ‘Hey, I haven’t seen my no­tice, I haven’t seen my re­lease.’ First in­ter­vene and make sure every­thing is in or­der,” she said.