ANSA McAL has do­nat­ed two pieces of heavy equip­ment worth TT$846,574 to sup­port on­go­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an and re­cov­ery ef­forts in earth­quake-strick­en Venezuela.

The equip­ment, a back­hoe loader and a skid steer loader, sup­plied through ANSA Mo­tors Guyana, forms part of a wider re­gion­al re­lief ini­tia­tive led by the gov­ern­ment of Guyana.

The ma­chin­ery was trans­port­ed to Venezuela aboard a ves­sel that sailed on Tues­day, af­ter be­ing de­liv­ered on Sat­ur­day to meet the sched­uled ship­ping dead­line.

ANSA McAL Group chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III said the do­na­tion re­flects the im­por­tance of re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion dur­ing times of cri­sis.

“When our neigh­bours face dif­fi­cult times, we all have a role to play. This is a mo­ment for the re­gion to come to­geth­er, and we hope this con­tri­bu­tion sup­ports the re­build­ing ahead for the peo­ple of Venezuela,” he said.

The dev­as­tat­ing earth­quakes struck north­ern Venezuela on June 24. Two pow­er­ful tremors, mea­sur­ing mag­ni­tude 7.2 and 7.5, oc­curred less than a minute apart, caus­ing wide­spread de­struc­tion in and around Cara­cas and the coastal state of La Guaira.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, as of Mon­day, the death toll had risen to 3,535, while near­ly 18,000 peo­ple were home­less af­ter the dis­as­ter struck the cap­i­tal and near­by coastal ar­eas.