Panama City.- The mayor of Panama, Mayer Mizrachi, stated to EFE this Sunday that he is tracking the location of the humanitarian aid sent to Venezuela following the double earthquake on June 24th with electronic devices, in order to be accountable to the citizens who donated it in a “massive effort.”
The Mayor’s Office of Panama collaborated in the collection, carried out by citizens last week, of about 100 tons of humanitarian aid, of which more than half has already been sent to Venezuela. This aid is in addition to other contributions from the national government and Panamanian public institutions that have also been sent to the South American country.
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Mizrachi explained that he placed ‘AirTags’, small tracking devices, “inside different supplies, from a box of diapers, a case of water bottles to a box of detergent,” so that “they go on different pallets (boards where cargo is packed), on different flights, and I can always answer my citizens on which flight it was and if it has already arrived.”
Now there are “four (airtags) that are in La Guaira and one that is not in La Guaira, which is in Maturín”, the capital of Monagas state located about 416 kilometers from Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, said Mizrachi.
“I am not an expert on Venezuelan geography, so I am not qualified to interpret what I have been seeing (…) for a day and a half, we have not seen any activity with that ‘tag’ that was left in Maturín,” added the mayor of Panama.
Mizrachi reported that on Saturday night another plane departed for Venezuela, this time “with 16 tons” of humanitarian aid distributed across “68 pallets,” marking “the tenth flight that has left Panama” for the South American country.
The mayor referred to the “different interpretations” being given to the information regarding the location of the tracked humanitarian aid, and expressed that “as a person who is in the political sphere,” where “there is always conspiracy,” he prefers “never to misinterpret and to first seek the most logical, the most benevolent reasoning.”
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“For example, perhaps there is a displaced person, who is homeless, someone gave them the box (which has the tag) and it ended up with a relative over there in Maturín. I want to think the best, I will always opt for that. If I didn’t think the best, we wouldn’t be sending another plane with 18 tons on Tuesday.”
At least 3,342 people died due to the double earthquake, with magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, while 16,740 were injured and 17,345 lost their homes, according to what the Government reported this Sunday, which has not provided figures on missing persons.
Disaster strikes especially in La Guaira, the coast adjacent to Caracas, where numerous apartment buildings collapsed totally or partially. This area experienced a landslide in 1999 that left thousands dead, in the well-known “Vargas tragedy”.
