RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter last week’s chaot­ic food rush at South Park Plaza, the or­gan­is­ers have re­sumed their ham­per dis­tri­b­u­tion dri­ve.

How­ev­er, this time it is be­ing done through var­i­ous Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs).

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant at South Park Plaza, Ro­ry Moses, said be­cause of the de­mand they have in­creased the num­ber of ham­pers to 1,500.

He said to pre­vent any fur­ther pub­lic health cri­sis the food re­lief dis­tri­b­u­tion has been arranged to pre­vent any crowd­ing.

“Our ham­per dri­ve is on­go­ing. We have ob­tained a list of per­sons and the NGO’s are get­ting it to dis­trib­ute di­rect­ly to the peo­ple. We have start­ed and it is still on­go­ing,” Moses said.

He added that the ad­di­tion­al ham­pers were be­ing fund­ed by ten­ants of the Plaza.

“It is a var­ied list. These NGOs are in dif­fer­ent rur­al ar­eas. They would have their list of per­sons from ar­eas that re­quire as­sis­tance. Right now we are all in a sit­u­a­tion where we need to help. Our fo­cus will be to help peo­ple who are in need so we can bring some lev­el of com­fort and care,” Moses said.

While the ham­pers would as­sist in the short term, Moses said the on­ly thing that would help in the long term would be if cit­i­zens abid­ed by the pub­lic health rules.

“We are try­ing our best to as­sist as a cor­po­rate body but we have been on a lock­down for a long pe­ri­od and our cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty ini­tia­tives will be chang­ing in the fu­ture.

Moses ap­pealed to every cit­i­zen to help one an­oth­er as long as they had ex­tra to give.

On Fri­day, the po­lice shut down a food dis­tri­b­u­tion dri­ve at South Park Plaza, in San Fer­nan­do, as hun­dreds of peo­ple lined the streets to col­lect food.

Peo­ple strug­gled to main­tain so­cial dis­tanc­ing and many hid.

Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment Don­na Cox lat­er said some of the peo­ple were needy and oth­ers were greedy.

Her com­ment pro­voked a bar­rage of crit­i­cisms from the pub­lic who ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of be­ing out of touch with re­al­i­ty.