Trinidad and To­ba­go is mo­bil­is­ing re­lief ef­forts to as­sist neigh­bour­ing Venezuela fol­low­ing dev­as­tat­ing twin earth­quakes, mea­sur­ing over 7.1 in mag­ni­tude, that killed around 1,400 peo­ple and de­stroyed sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties.

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that this coun­try was still in the process of col­lect­ing items, with plans to send sup­plies to those im­pact­ed by the dis­as­ter.

“We are in the process of col­lect­ing to ship,” Sobers said.

De­tails on the types of items be­ing col­lect­ed and the time­line for the ship­ment were not im­me­di­ate­ly avail­able.

The ini­tia­tive comes as re­gion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions and gov­ern­ments con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela, where res­cue and re­cov­ery ef­forts are on­go­ing fol­low­ing the pow­er­ful earth­quakes.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has his­tor­i­cal­ly pro­vid­ed hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance to Venezuela dur­ing times of cri­sis, re­flect­ing the close ties be­tween the neigh­bour­ing coun­tries and the long­stand­ing tra­di­tion of re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty in re­spond­ing to dis­as­ters.

More in­for­ma­tion on the re­lief dri­ve and how mem­bers of the pub­lic can con­tribute is ex­pect­ed to be an­nounced in the com­ing days.

The dev­as­tat­ing earth­quakes struck north­ern Venezuela on Wednes­day, 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.