Caracas.- Venezuela is outlining a plan to assist the thousands of people who lost their homes due to the earthquakes on June 24th, which left at least 4,333 dead and 16,740 injured, and promised this Saturday to deliver the first 200 homes next week.
Nearly 18,000 people lost their homes, a number that authorities believe will rise as the inspection process continues for buildings that did not collapse but suffered damage.
This Saturday, according to the Government, a biometric census began in the temporary camps set up in Caracas and the neighboring states of Miranda and La Guaira -the most affected-, as well as in the areas where people are waiting for the diagnosis of the inspections, in order to determine how many houses are needed.
According to initial calculations, 25,000 will be required, noted the president of Parliament, the Chavista Jorge Rodríguez, in a press conference, who assured that his sister and acting leader, Delcy Rodríguez, will deliver the first 200 homes “next week,” without providing further details.
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Working “at an accelerated pace”
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The head of the National Assembly (AN) indicated that 90 of the 94 camps were set up in schools where there are currently no classes, but which must be vacated by next September at the latest for the start of the new academic term.
Therefore, he explained that the authorities are working “at full speed” on the creation of temporary “single-family camps,” as well as on the “rapid” completion of housing that was being built by the State and on purchases in the secondary market.
In addition, he announced that the Parliament, controlled by Chavismo, will reform the leasing law, which he described as “very regressive,” so that property owners “do not feel any kind of fear of renting out their homes.”
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Rodríguez assured that 200,000 “are not being rented out“.
In this sense, the people who are in schools today will be in a rented, finished, or state-purchased house starting in September, or in “some kind of single-family transitional housing while their permanent home is being built“.
Land search
The deputy also explained that there is an “accelerated search for spaces to build earthquake-resistant cities and housing“.
According to the senior official, an overflight in the devastated region of La Guaira allowed for the location of more than 40 plots of land totaling 584,000 square meters for the construction of low-rise buildings.
This week, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Tom Fletcher, told EFE from La Guaira that the Venezuelan government’s plan, supported by the United Nations, consists, among other things, of bringing prefabricated houses to the country to solve the housing problem.
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Fletcher assured that the multilateral organization is already “raising money” for the implementation of the plan.
The deputy said that the head of state is “sending letters to other countries where there are frozen assets that belong to Venezuela” and that, in addition, she is “at this moment doing all that financial engineering process to have the resources on hand and quickly“.
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On the other hand, Rodríguez assured that there are 315 unidentified bodies and denied that they are being buried in mass graves.
In that sense, he explained that at La Esperanza cemetery, about 25 kilometers from the urban center of Catia La Mar (one of the affected areas), these bodies are being buried after samples have been taken from them for future identification.
EFE was able to confirm on Friday, from a distance, that work is underway at that cemetery for an expansion with the capacity for “about 2,000 or 3,000 graves” more, according to a worker.
In addition, the burial process is being carried out in several rows, where the name or a number for the unidentified is placed on white crosses, along with flowers and stones that mark the niche.
Rodríguez also addressed criticism that the debris removal process is being slow, arguing that it must be exactly that way, as the Government still trusts that there could be people buried alive.
Rejection of statements made by De la Espriella
This Saturday, the Government of Venezuela reacted “with surprise” to the statements made by the president-elect of Colombia, Abelardo de la Espriella, who on Friday asserted that “the reconstruction of Venezuela after the earthquake must be carried out” by his country “with everything that implies.”
Caracas reaffirmed that it is its “exclusive” competence to plan and lead the reconstruction, for which it has already “activated” its public companies, national industry, and private sector.
The President of the Parliament also rejected those statements: They are “an outrage”.
De la Espriella clarified this Saturday that he has not proposed “disregarding the sovereignty of Venezuela nor replacing the responsibilities that correspond to its authorities.”
