ALMOST 5,000 people are known to have died in two earthquakes that devastated Venezuela in June, but the United Nations estimates that as many as 50,000 people may still be missing – with many feared buried under rubble.
The number of confirmed deaths is now higher at 4,930, lawmaker Jorge Rodriguez announced on Thursday.
The disaster almost a month ago impacted tens of thousands of others. Nearly 17,000 people are wounded, and 21,120 are living in shelters.
Venezuelan teams have been operating since the earthquake struck, but locals say their response has been slow.
“From the very first moment, from when the earthquake happened, there was an immediate response, but from civilians. Civilians and independent people. The state’s response is only being seen now,” Cinthia Pulido, a Venezuelan displaced by the earthquakes, told Al Jazeera. “We’re watching and waiting for some kind of answer.”
International rescue teams sent in the immediate aftermath of the disaster have left as the focus moves to providing humanitarian relief.
“The little I can get is just for me to survive, support my children, and help my mum,” Louismarez Paez, who has also been displaced, told Al Jazeera.
Her mother, she said, does not receive any assistance other than that which she herself provides.
Venezuela has faced tight US sanctions since 2015, which experts say is making the government’s job even harder.
“Venezuela has crucial resources that it is not being allowed to access,” Mark Weisbrot, senior economist and co-director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said.
That includes $11bn blocked by the US and European countries that Venezuela “should legally have”, Weisbrot said.
Earlier this week, a group of 14 Democratic lawmakers in the US sent a letter urging the White House to ease economic sanctions on Venezuela to aid recovery efforts, according to a report from Spanish newspaper El Pais.
The sanctions, they wrote, are “severely hampering urgent relief efforts” and have “severely undermined the country’s response and reconstruction efforts”.
The UN estimates that the recovery efforts in Venezuela could cost the country $37bn.