Imtiaz Sooliman – Mandela Day I Gift Of The Givers donates basics towards those affected looting

From water provision, disaster response, hunger alleviation,

education, health care and social upliftment, they kick started

their day in giving basic staple items such as bread and milk to

homes in various communities. For more on this, we're joined by

Doctor MTS Suliman, who's the founder of gift of the givers, a

very good evening to you. Imtiaz, thanks for joining us this

evening. Let's just first start with

your relief efforts on this particular day. Have they been

complicated in any way? And I ask this because we understood for

some reports suggesting that one of your warehouses was looted. Is

this true?

Good evening to you. No, it's that's not true. It was a

warehouse that was used by us previously, one of the business

volunteer in Port Chester on the south coast, used to assist us.

And every time there was a problem in the community, he would ask for

food parcels or any kind of support, and then we would send it

to him, and he would store it in the in that warehouse, which is

his own warehouse, and distribute it within the next day or two.

Unfortunately, in January himself, his brother and his father also

succumbed to covid 19. So as a result, we didn't have that

volunteer anymore, and that facility was not being used by us.

But because our signage was inside there, people assumed it was a

warehouse of ours that was looted. Yes, the warehouse was looted and

it was burned, but, you know, we had no supplies in there anymore,

and it was not our warehouse. Okay, alright, so Doctor Suman

then tell us a little bit more about the impact of the current

looting crisis in South Africa, how that's going to have an impact

on demand experience by gift of the givers. And

the demand is huge. You know, somebody put a a false message

yesterday to say we were giving out free food parcels today,

without exaggeration. And we must have, I had my phone must have

taken over 3000 calls. They were just ringing all the time. You

couldn't answer the phone, and there was almost 2000

ah, SMS messages for people saying they need food parcels. Yes, some

people may be taking a chance, but overall, you can see there's a

huge need. The need was there even before you know the crisis

happened. The need was there before covid 19. It was there

during covid 19. It was there before the current situation. And

it's there during the kind of situation. And you can see that

the type of cause that come come from all strata of society, not

only the very poor, it's a middle class, slightly higher class,

who've lost their jobs, have had difficulty. A lot of calls from

institutions all age, homes, often it just home for the you know,

abused women, many facilities like that. And just people are saying

to my neighbors, haven't eaten for a few days. So the demand is is

added. It's the situation itself, the economic situation before the

situation and the covid 19. So there's a huge requirement for

food parcels and food generally in KZN, but in other parts of the

country, typically, how does the foundation respond to these calls,

and how do people get hold of you? Is it a simple case of anybody who

feels they need you, or is it actual process to follow?

Well, everybody does call us as individuals, you know, as people,

as institutions, but we don't operate like that. We don't work

on individuals. We work what communities and we work the only

place we work like for it's an institution itself, where there's

a group of people in there, and otherwise. Other than that, if

people call us from different areas, say somebody calls me from

a home and say, I got I need something at home. I said, we

don't operate like that. You need to I need a call from the

community organization or somebody that's controlling the area to

give us proper feedback. We need to get it. We need to check that's

really the situation. If people really need the help, because the

calls are coming from far, from far and wide. It's not like from

one area, like, for example, if you have a flood disaster or a

fire disaster, it's restricted to one small area. But now is the

entire KZN. I mean, two days ago, Minister of Agriculture to this

economy called me and she said they are worried. There's 29 areas

on the north coast. They don't have a single shop. There's no

shop to buy items from. What are the people going to do? Because

that kind of challenges that you have, in addition to the

challenges from the different communities, people calling all

the time. So what we do is, when we get the calls, we tell the

people, alright, which area are you operating from? They will tell

us the areas, and we say, How many people in that area? They will

say, this amount of people need food parcels. We will send in our

team, some scouts, area checks, get some kind of feedback. Of

course, we can't be 100% it's impossible to know the situation

of every person in every house, but you get a fair idea. And you

know, if you hit a 90% success rate, it's fantastic. You may lose

five or 10% but it doesn't really matter. People are in a difficult

situation right now. So we try to get and we grew up with credible

people, credible people, credible organizations. We have a track

record. And of course, the other thing is that we've had a

relationship with many, many organizations that we dealt with.

So that makes it a little easier. And then we pack the stuff, take

it ourselves, make sure to distribute ourselves in

partnership with the people who have called us. What are

expectations of where to for.

Here, because I'd imagine you'd also need your own donors to be

able to keep up with your operations, outreach programs. Do

you have any fears around drying up of supply there, and would you

be able to get to people on time for your part, that which you're

doing? We know that there's a national effort through

government. But do you think you have enough to be able to reach

all who are in need?

Look for in terms of things drying out that wouldn't happen. You

know, we got an overwhelming support from the public and from

corporates and institutions, organizations, people setting up

all types of coalition drives. We even got calls from overseas, from

South Africans based outside the country, from several countries.

All call, all wanting to have every single hour the summit were

to set up some kind of campaign to assist us. So the support is, is,

is incredible. What's the difficult part is, the need is too

huge. There's just too many people who need assistance. And it's not

some small food bank that you're giving. We're trying to give a

full we're not we try. We are doing it right now. We're giving a

full food parcel that will last a family of five for a whole month.

So they don't need to go to a shop now, because in Australia nine

eight days, there's no shop. What do they do after three or four

days, when the food is finished? So we need to build time for some

new structures to be set up and take people what I call off the

grid. So that's what we're trying to do. But of course, food parcels

are expensive. This transport, purchasing items and getting

distributed. We have a standard policy. We can only do as much as

we can do, so as much as we can do, we will do and try to help as

best we can, for individual food parcels, for the family in

supporting institutions. And of course, we've been supporting

hospitals, also healthcare workers, paramedics, frontline

workers, because we're saying that you guys cannot stand in a queue

right now. There's been a shortage of manpower at hospitals because

of fuel shortage. Workers can't healthcare workers can't get

hospital because of security. They can't get to hospital. There's

sometimes two nurses in a ward of a whole lot of patients. So we've

been providing food packages for hospitals too. So we try to cover

a wide spectrum. But to answer your question, support is good,

but any extra support will be helpful. The more support we get,

the more people we can help. Thank you so much for speaking to us

all. The best to you. Dr Imtiaz Suleiman, who is founder of a gift

of the givers, let's take.