WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump, under fire for his response to the storms that ravaged Puerto Rico, announced on Tuesday that he will visit the hurricane-battered island next week.
“I’m going to Puerto Rico on Tuesday,” Trump told reporters at the White House, signalling that October 3 was the first date he could go without interfering with recovery efforts.
“Those people are very important to all of us,” the president said. “We have shipped massive amounts of food and water and supplies.”
“We have worked very, very hard in Puerto Rico. It’s very tough because it’s an island,” he said.
Trump’s announcement came amid accusations that his administration has failed to pro, vide the same urgent level of assistance to Puerto Rico that it gave to storm-battered Florida and Texas.
Puerto Rico, a US territory in the Caribbean, was hit by successive hurricanes — Irma and Maria — which have left most of the Spanish-speaking island of 3.4 million without running water, electricity and communications. Food, water and fuel are scarce and Puerto Rican officials and residents have issued increasingly desperate appeals for help.
“It’s life or death,” Carmen Yulin Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital, said Tuesday.
“People are really dying,” the mayor of the city of nearly 400,000 people told CBS News. “There are people that have had no food and no water for 14 days.”
Trump has taken much of the heat himself after tweeting repeatedly over the weekend about American football players kneeling during the national anthem while failing to mention Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rican-born singer Marc Anthony told Trump in a tweet with an expletive thrown in to stop talking about the National Football League and “do something about our people in need in #PuertoRico.”
“We are American citizens too,” Anthony said.
Appealing for “swift action” from the Trump administration and US Congress, Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello also felt the need to issue a reminder — twice — that Puerto Ricans are US citizens.
“What Puerto Rico is experiencing after Hurricane Maria is an unprecendented disaster,” Rossello said in a statement. “The devastation is vast.
“We are collaborating with the federal government in emergency response and have received a tremendous outpour of solidarity from people all over the nation,” he said.
“But make no mistake — this is a humanitarian disaster involving 3.4 million US citizens,” he said. “We will need the full support of the US government.
“People cannot forget that we are US citizens — and proud of it.”
While US citizens, residents of Spanish-speaking Puerto Rico are not allowed to vote in US presidential elections and the island has only a non-voting representative in the US Congress. — AFP
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