WILLEMSTAD - USAID is one of the entities most likely organizing humanitarian aid to crisis-hit Venezuela, Curaçao Prime Minister Eugene Rhuggenaath wrote to Member of Parliament (MP) Giselle McWilliam (MAN) in answering her questions about possible use of the island as hub for such a relief effort.

The focus of the international action is on medicine, food and supplements, with the Colombian capital as most important collection point from where many of the supplies are being taken to the city of Cucutá on the Venezuelan border. Volunteers are being recruited inside the troubled South American nation to help distribute the goods.

The prime minister acknowledged that the neighboring Dutch Caribbean country could be viewed as cooperating to increase the political pressure on the embattled Maduro regime in Caracas this way. The offer his government made to function as aid hub has as condition that neither the American Forward Location (FOL) airbase nor the locally-stationed armed forces of the Netherlands are to be part of this operation.

The labor union umbrella entities “Solidaridat Sindikal” and CGTC remain worried that the Venezuelan military army might attack the island. They also fear the Isla refinery leased by “Petroleos de Venezuela” PDVSA will not receive crude it needs for processing from the mainland and perhaps close its doors altogether.