Imtiaz Sooliman – Daily News Gift of the givers fight against covid 19
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We're talking to you. Yeah, great talking to you, too. Thank you
for joining me in this nice exclusive with with the Daily
News. We are greatly appreciative of your presence here with us.
Pleasure and I appreciate the interview. Thank you very much,
sure.
So So perhaps we, we should get the ball rolling.
And yeah, and I'd just like to you know thank you once again for for
joining us.
And since it's a recorded interview. Um, I just like to
perhaps, you know, just give a bit of background
as to you know who you are and who you represent. So obviously,
Doctor MTS Suliman represents the gift of the givers Foundation,
which is the largest disaster response Non Governmental
Organization of African origin on the African continent, but you are
the first agency to be accredited by proudly South African and you
know your work over the African continent is well documented, you
know, with having,
having delivered a wide range, you know, of of disaster relief and
primary health care clinics and feeding schemes, you know, and
other other other things, such as water purification, water wells,
distributing blankets, you know. So overall, you know, it's just a
wonderful humanitarian organization, you know that's has,
you know, that has made such such a massive, massive positive
impact. So without further ado, thank you so much for for joining
us today, and I just like you to you know, just share with us some
of your personal career highlights, and also just tell us
about some of your projects that you've been working on since the
start of the covid 19 pandemic.
The covid 19 pandemic, you know, came around around March, when the
first case, on the fifth of March, the first positive case was found
in Hilton. Now, strangely enough, Hilton is not is 10 minutes from
where I stay in Peter manisburg, and the first case was right next
to us on on 15th March, when the President made the first
announcement to say that tonight, we declaring a national disaster.
But covid 19, it wasn't a lockdown. It was a degradation for
national disaster. At that point, we were already ready? On the 11th
of March, we are putting things into into action. To say, in case
we get the numbers that we have got in other parts of the world,
we need to be ready. Not that we going to act immediately, but we
need to be ready. And then all those two days, we saw the first
thing that came up as
a started coming, that there's going to be a need for testing.
And we found that the testing the private sector was expensive. It
was 14 150 Rand per person. So a family of five has to go. We're
talking about 7000 Rand minimum. And how many people have got? Got
that kind of money? They're not a medical aid, and the medical aid
doesn't approve to pay for that. So we said, look to have people
that may shun testing, and they could be walking time bombs in the
country, and nobody would know that they could be positive. And
we walk around, you know, as carriers. So I got together a
group of people, you know, laboratories, people that we know,
that we have a relationship with, and we rearranged it to such a way
that the price was 650 instead of 1450
and we encourage people not to burden that public services, but
it does go to private services and make sure you get tested. It's the
right and responsible thing to do. We put up 10 labs, you know, 1010,
sorry, testing sites, and we put up three mobile teams in the
country. And, you know, we had a lot of like, the sports people
coming to us, police services and people in general, coming to us.
So that was the first thing, the second thing and the more
important thing, well, there's two pastors. One is we stress from the
beginning that the government had to make sure there were enough
healthcare workers as backup support. Our hospitals were
already in difficulty, pre covid 19, when so many posts had not
been filled. And if you speak to medical personnel, be it nurses or
doctors or anybody else in hospitals, they will tell you the
overburden they work in more than a quarter of overtime they
exhausted. And you know, the they can't cope with the numbers
pre covid 19. So the most important thing to do was to have
backup support, and especially if you learn from Europe and America
that they got first one.
Institutions, they got all the equipment, but the manpower ran
out because they were overburdened. They were drained,
they were exhausted. And we should have learned from that and made
sure that we had backup support. And the message was clear,
lockdown is being put into place so that health services, the
hospitals, could be prepared. The biggest preparation was to provide
stuff which was not done, and up to today has not been done. And
secondly, was to provide PPEs. And every hospital we went to, you
know the story about PPEs, what they procured, what they actually
procured, they were paid for, but what they procured, everybody
delivered. Nobody can give you that answer. So the two critical
things which which were done for lockdown was not implemented. Then
the third thing issue was, when was the fourth issue? The fourth
issue was, we knew that a lot of hospitals are going to say they
don't want patients to come to the front door. They want to screen
them on the outside, because covid Patients may infect non covid
patients. You know, in the hospitals, I never you know the
super spread events inside hospital. So that is a very
logical thing to do. And so we put 3710s
in various hospitals that requested them. Some of them had
their own facility. They could do that. Others couldn't do that. And
they are requested tents. And we put in 37 tenths in different
hospitals at a cost of 3 million Rand a month from March right up
to November,
and as we stop the second wave, Vita, unfortunately, yeah, but
also, also it was a cost factor. It was very, very expensive. Then,
while doing all those things and talking about PPEs, we knew there
was a worldwide shortage already, because there was a worldwide
demand, and if it was available, the airports were closed and there
were not enough flights, and they were not enough planes and limited
planes were distributing to all parts of the world, and Europe and
America was taking out all the production from China. But again,
fortunately, because our years of international relationship, and
you know, 28 years in the business, we managed to procure
PPEs. And within three days of the national lockdown and sorry,
national emergency, we could start supplying PPEs, and we brought in
millions of PPEs, you know, to support over 200 hospitals and
clinics nationwide, yeah, and we did it on an ongoing mode, and we
still doing it right now. Again, we're getting lots of calls for
PPEs, especially from the Eastern Cape, so it's something that we're
carrying on. What's right now. So, so obviously,
you know, the the covid, 19 pandemic has has brought a lot of
pain and suffering. We've seen how, you know, families have been
dealing with losing loved ones. We've seen how the pandemic, you
know, has has decimated the economy, with people losing their
jobs and people losing their homes. And you know, it's, it's
also there, causing a another, you know, humanitarian crisis, you
know, you know, with issues such as hunger, you know, now, now
being prevalent. How, as the gift of the givers, as someone who's
been operating, you know, in a space of of helping people and and
attending to to crisis, how are you managing, you know, with with
this current pandemic, with the current cost of life, how hard is
it hitting you as The gift of the givers, and how you managing this?
Well, the two parts to your question, one is the fourth part,
and the second part, how does a loss of life affect us?
Fortunately, my staff are all trained, you know, and the word I
emphasize all the time is emotional distancing. You've heard
of social distancing. In our case, it's emotional distancing that
when you see the loss of life, you cannot be attached to it, the more
you become attached and emotional, you will not be able to function.
It's the same type of thinking when you go to disasters, large
scale disasters, in wars, in earthquakes and floods, in
hurricanes, and you see the huge loss of life, if you get attached
to an individual, you have a problem. You can have sympathy for
the situation, but don't get individually attached to any
person or child or woman or, you know, all person and because of
that mask by staff have been went to hospitals, and I've been with
them, and they say, Oh, that old lady is still on, in on on a CPAP
machine or high flow machine she's battling for the last three weeks.
That's how she gets better, but no emotional attachment. By doing
that, we could deal with the numbers, not only with the
patients. This time, it was different, because even the
medical staff were emotionally affected. So we are dealing with
medical personnel who are demotivated, who are depressed,
who are scared, who have anxiety, and, you know who have difficulty,
and you suddenly want to offload proms, and you have, you have to
be a listening ear for this situation, and you try to comfort
and you encourage, but at the same time again, you don't get
attached, because then becomes difficult to work. And it's
already going 11 months now, you know, on the 15th of February, and
the teams have done dream.
Remarkably well, and being detached, you know, from
situation, yet being completely involved in the situation in terms
of the food, we knew that after the lockdown, people will survive
three weeks, at least. They had their pay, they bought the items,
and for the next three to four weeks, they will survive. But
after that, the problems were coming. Many of them were waiting
for the 1015, extra grant, which took a long time to kick in, and
everybody didn't get that. We started the food rollout program,
and we started supporting existing people who already ran so
kitchens. We supported 100 soup kitchens on a daily basis, and we
rolled out over 300,000 food parcels nationwide. Each food
parcel feeds a family of five for 30 days, and currently, because
the food crisis getting even worse, but more people losing
their jobs, we are now busy wherever we put balls, and we're
trying to find land and in schools and around the schools. We're
right now. We busy in Adelaide and in Makanda. We're trying to see
where we can crafting it, where we can put our balls, what seats to
make people self sufficient, so at least they have something to eat
and to encourage that. So that's an additional point of
sustainability, which we got right now teams on the ground in Penny
Makanda Adelaide, crafting it. And obviously, you know these, these
things take, you know, resources for for for them to come to
fruition, and one of the most difficult things to source right
now, issues, you know, finances and all of that. Do you mind
sharing with us? How? How do you source your financial resources?
You know, in this difficult time, in order for you to do the good
work that you do. Our
advantage is that we were not something that was formed three
months ago or four months ago. We have a 28 year history. In our 28
year history, we've never asked for money. We don't make
proposals, we don't phone people, we don't go door to door. We don't
have paid advertising. We have media coverage, and we have feed
people from the from the different areas, give feedback to the family
and friends in the different companies and say, gift of the
givers was here. And because of that kind of reputation and our
speed of delivery, people come to us, the private sector, public
schools, pensioners, whole age, people, you know, and corporates
and recover 19, I must say, the corporates have been very, very
good, far more than ever before. They've come, but far bigger
amounts. They've come to support us. That's in terms of cash. But a
lot of companies came forward of food items. They came out with
large quantities of food, container loads of food, and
saying, Look, people are hungry. It's time. We all have to give
back the country. Got to stand together, and we're doing this.
And a lot of items came in, food. Then we had interest from American
companies and American charity trust, first time, you know, they
were monitoring South Africa, see what we're doing. And obviously
they got offices or people in this country, or somebody that, you
know, watches what's going on, and they started calling us to say we
have been recommended to come to you. And we got different
companies from America and some from Europe and the UK showing
interest in supporting us. And yes, funding did come from these
organizations from overseas, and they've now called for the second
round in the new year, because it started off in March last year,
and it's time for one year, and we're starting to get interest,
repeat interest, from these organizations and companies, sure.
So, so how can you know people volunteer for the gift of the
givers? And how would volunteering work now with the covid 19
restrictions, you know, I think it's also important that we that
you know, that we highlight the importance of getting involved and
getting stuck in there. Because, you know, we, nobody can do it
alone. Everybody needs to come together so that we beat this
pandemic and we beat with the humanitarian crisis that comes
with it. So how do people get help in your organization?
Well, as a rule, we don't use much volunteers. You know, because our
staff all paid and all trained, we disaster specialists, so people in
our system have to know how it works. In the interest of all the
team members. Means it's like a clockwork everybody don't know
what the next one's going to do, and you can't do that with doing
something from the outside. The only volunteers that we use is
what desire international disaster response. We have teams of
doctors, health, health worker. I mean, such a rescue medical
workers and paramedics. And we take them. They don't work fast,
full time. They only come with us when we need them for
international disaster, and they go back to the normal look after
that. The second group of volunteers that we use are
counselors that work on our counseling service line. But over
the years, although they volunteers, we actually pay them
because life is tight. Economy is tight. Everybody needs something
to survive. So although we call them volunteers, they don't work
fast, full time for.
That service for those three six hours, they work at a time per
week. We pay them for that service, but they are regular
people with us. Then in the covid 19 itself, we haven't allowed any
volunteer to work with us because of the of the spread of infection,
the rules you have to follow. It's only our team members. And the
team members have worked from the 15th of march up to today, Monday
to Sunday with no holiday, no Christmas, no year, every single
day, because they know the system and you know to take the
precautions. But while saying that, if you go to an area like we
went to coastal field last week, we have people in the area who
know the area. Those people then become the conduit. They work with
us, and we tell them, Okay, you know the people you need, the food
puzzles you need, the vegetables. You've been doing a job, you can
now work with us. So in that case, people who are already in the
system, who are known to the community, work with us. But
actually we are working with them because they know the people in
area and who needs assistance. That's the only way we sort of
have volunteers working with us. Otherwise, it's all full time.
People who know the system, sure, and then, obviously, now, now,
just want to go back to one of my earlier points. You know that
besides covid 19, you know, we have other disasters like the, you
know, like we have droughts that are out there. We've, we recently
had a cyclone, I think it was called the cyclone Eloise or
something.
You know, we have issues of poverty, issues of world hunger.
We've got wars that are going on. We've got conflicts. We've got
people who are displaced, you know, from from around the world.
So you know, how? How do you deal with all of these different,
multiple projects and multiple issues and disasters at the same
time? How difficult is it to to coordinate?
Well, it's, to be honest, not very difficult, because the rule is set
for ourselves, is that whenever we take on a disaster, and covid 19
is a disaster, the primary rule is, you don't let other projects.
You make sure, when it takes the your systems in place,
all existing projects run. And that's our standard rule, and we
find that we can do multiple things at the same time. And
whilst doing that, of course, we have offices in other parts of the
world which don't stop function. We have offices in Malawi,
Zimbabwe, Somalia, Yemen, Syria and Palestine. And all those
projects continue to run. So the support for all those projects
continued during covid 19, and we did covid 19 specific projects to
all those countries where the requirements were. In those
countries, most of the cases was food parcel requirement that
because of the hunger and no jobs and economy collapsing, so it was
mostly full pass requirements and container loads of food went from
South Africa to all those projects that we work with in South Africa
itself, we will respond to virtually every fire, to
hurricane, to, you know, and every type of disaster, all parts of
country, you know, after last week, you know, in boy sense,
Maslow, you know,
everywhere there's been fires we've been responding and there's
The storms in Louis we helped in jozini in KZN, and there wasn't
much. We had teams. We had a whole team of 50 people on standby to
intervene in Mozambique. We had helicopter, five helicopters, 10
boats, 30, crops, 24, by four, off road vehicles. We had
communication systems, diving, specialist, surgery personnel,
medical teams all ready to intervene, but there was no need
for international assistance. The earlier one, the crisis in
Lebanon, when the when the grass exploded at the airport there, we
took a conscious decision that we will not be sending any medical
personnel, because we were in the heart of the crisis in South
Africa at that point, and we needed all our medical personnel
in this country, so we supported them with financial resources.
They are their manpower, but we provide the financial resources,
but we didn't provide medical teams because our medical teams
were required in our own country. Since the medical staff already
exhausted, many of them were ill in the first wave. Few died, not
as many as they died in the second wave, but in the second wave, it's
a mean, total carnage. I want a medical person that they've passed
on, sure. So, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you for for for for
that, for that highlight.
So, so you know how,
obviously, as as you've mentioned that you know when, when, when you
deal with one crisis. You don't let other other issues fail. You
know you you also continue
doing your work with them. So, so I just want to to know, you know,
with all the requests for help, how do you decide where, where to
where?
A ideological, irrational answer. What is immediate? Immediate is,
are there other options of water? If there's no river water, is
there groundwater? Groundwater is its excess? We can do that. Then
another example of a disaster, you give a contract for boreholes. You
don't test the type of people there and who's checking for the
water. We've been town to town, and they tell us, you will never
find water yet. And I say, Why do you say that we drilled 32
boreholes? We gave a contract for 32 balls, and didn't find one drop
of water. They drilled 15 balls, 20 balls. So the contract is
signed. Drill several, several 1000 meters, and after so many,
several 1000s of meters, unfortunately, there's no water.
You walk away. All that money is lost, what expertise were used,
and you find who suffers at the end of the day, the public, the
government, needs to check the type of people they employ, the
type of contracts they give the type of prices they pay. And
suddenly, when you work it out, 4 million Rand for a ball, something
that could be done, 550,000
Rand, and still no water, it's, it is the disaster being run by
government. That total inefficiency, and, you know, and a
lack of supervision in SIG and a warning contracts just nearly or
willy nilly side the wrong way around, and even the PPEs. I mean,
I was told at the highest level inside government that contracts
for PPEs were given to car wash dealers, hair salon people have no
experience in in medical experience. Yeah,
there was company. There was even a kids are in company that got
probably even a pet shop. Who knows? You know, but, but it, it's
so the money was always there.
It is the way that we just applied. And if government does
things the right way, in integral way, corporate will come into
support. And especially in covid 19 has proven to me, the
corporates for the first time, like, well, I can't say the first
time, a lot of corporates have come forward and said, look, it's
not about our companies anymore. It's about
our people and our country. And they've come and when we said,
let's let's go for it. We support you for infrastructure
development, everything, we said, Yes, and I'll give you another
classic. In the last seven days, I've been hounded back and they
said, Look, get the vaccine. Get the vaccine. We'll make
busy. We will vaccinate 60 employees. We will pay for the
vaccine. We'll vaccinate the 60,000 employees, and we will give
you money for another 60,000 vaccines to give to some you can't
afford
it, and so many companies have come forward. Another company
said, we will give you fridges and we'll give you
generators, but we only get from we're not sure when the last is
going to go and the vaccine will get damaged. Another company came
forward and said, we'll view all our storage space in South Africa,
frozen storage space in South Africa, and our trucks to carry
virus, you know, I mean the vaccine in a frozen container.
We'll do that for you. Offers another group game. We got 3000
nurses. We'll make them available to you. So there's been a
willingness to support the minds came forward. We'll give it to our
CSI budget. We pay for our staff for the mines, and review money to
help those who don't have the vaccine and can afford it. We will
do this. So corporate South Africa has come forward, and the private
sector and all Republicans say, look, I buy one vaccine to myself,
and I sponsor one for somebody can't afford it, although the
government said it will give it free. But the sentiment expressed,
people want to see progress in the country, but you gotta lead it in
the right way and do the right things, of course, yeah, yeah. So
And lastly, which brings us to to the end of our interview,
on on Facebook, there's, there's a, there's a group called
Doctor MCL Suleyman for presidents of South Africa. It now has over
3600
followers. What are your thoughts on this Facebook group? Do you see
yourself as a as a potential leader of South Africa? I'm
not interested in political office. Not interested. Never have
been. I was. I was selected in 94 as a leader of a political party
without my knowledge. I wasn't even in the country. When I was
there, I was sent, I'm the head of a party that and I said, I'm not a
political guy. And secretly, I was praying that we don't get any
seats. Thank God Almighty has heard the prayer and we didn't get
any seats. Yeah, and you know, let's be honest, when you get
involved in the government system,
can't work as too much, too many guys to sign, to sign the papers,
too much indecision. Not No.
Size of decisions taken rapidly. We are disaster specialists. We
know how to work fast. I'm going to train all that to be in
somewhere else, not interested, you know, but in what it does say
and, oh, well, let's let me put it this way. I like to put something
out there. We would like to be the service provider to government,
because we can specialize in that, into water, we can do health, we
can do sanitation. I would like that kind of arrangement, that
whoever is the government of the day utilize us as not as the only
one, but one of the people that can provide efficient service at a
very reasonable price to the country. And with that, we can
draw corporate money and public money, and add that to government
money and get one plus one will give you three, you know, where we
can get maximum benefit for the sake of the people, yes, that I
would love anytime. In terms of the Facebook back page being
created, we have to ask a very important question, why is that
page created? Is it there's a lack of faith or a total, you know,
vote of no confidence in existing leader and the political party? On
what basis it created? What are they looking for? Effective
leadership, honesty, integrity, trust or the capacity to rural
country. What are they looking for? You know, those questions are
not answered, but if they are looking for all of those things,
then it's an indictment on the head of the state and also the
political party they're putting there. And this is something they
need to reinspect and reflect on themselves to see why that kind of
court is being made, but I categorically want to state I will
thank all those people of well known, assured confidence and want
me to gather in the country. Thank you very much, but I'm not
interested in political office, okay? And and there we have it.
Uh, thank you very much for taking the time to speak to the Daily
News. We really appreciate it, and we also appreciate the wonderful
work that you're doing, and we support the wonderful work that
you're doing, and you must always know that you have a friend with
us here at The Daily News. Thank you so much for your time. It's an
honor to have
interviewed you today. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for making this time and give us opportunity.
And thank you very much for all the Daily News any dependent
online has done for any dependent group has done for givers and our
projects. And through that, we've managed to help so many people.
Thank you very much. Great. Thank you,
sir. You.