Leah So­rias

Two Dig­i­cel work­ers were among the hun­dreds killed in Haiti, fol­low­ing Tues­day's 7.3 earth­quake. The com­pa­ny, in a state­ment yes­ter­day, said while 900 of its work­ers were evac­u­at­ed from Dig­i­cel's Turgeau Build­ing, Port-au-Prince, the two em­ploy­ees did not make it. Dig­i­cel's com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, Pen­ny Gomez, said the na­tion­al­i­ty of the two work­ers was yet to be con­firmed.

"We are ter­ri­bly shocked and sad­dened by these ter­ri­ble loss­es and we will like to ex­tend our heart­felt sym­pa­thies and con­do­lences to all the fam­i­lies, friends and col­leagues at this very sad time," Dig­i­cel said in the state­ment. The mo­bile provider has pledged to do­nate US$5 mil­lion to help with ur­gent re­lief in Haiti af­ter the pover­ty-strick­en coun­try was dev­as­tat­ed by the earth­quake.

Dig­i­cel, who months ago turned down the of­fer to host the Be­y­once con­cert in T&T, said it would do­nate the mon­ey to non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions who were spear­head­ing re­lief ef­forts, the re­lease stat­ed. The com­pa­ny said it sent a team of tech­ni­cal ex­perts to Haiti ear­ly yes­ter­day to as­sist in re­lief ef­forts and to as­sess the im­pact of the earth­quake on its com­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture.

Mean­while, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er of TSTT, Camile Sa­landy, said peo­ple would be al­lowed to text do­na­tions to help with the re­lief ef­fort in Haiti. She said TSTT would un­der­write the cost. She said TSTT al­so was mak­ing con­tact with the tele­phone com­pa­ny in Haiti and would dis­patch sup­port and in­fra­struc­ture, if it was need­ed.