At a time when individuals and groups are helping the poor and needy to fight Covid-19 pandemic, efforts made by Kaleem Ul Hafeez, Chairman of Al– Hafeez Educational Academy and Managing Director of Hotel River View in providing food packets for more than 2000 people daily is indeed laudable.
According to chairman of Al– Hafeez Educational Academy, “We are running Hotel River community kitchen (lunger) in the name of sabka dastarkhwan for the last 6 to 8 months silently. In the afternoon, foods were routinely taken to nearby area of Dhobi Ghaat and were distributed there to around 100-115 people. When national lockdown was imposed we came to realise that there could be many in need of such services. Distribution of ration kits can be easily done but distribution of cooked meals was not an easy task then. Then we decided that instead of sending food to earlier places where we used to distribute we would distribute it in front of Hotel River View. We had anticipated that the number would go up constantly and we had decided no matter how many more number of people may come there, we would ensure that all go from here after taking food.
“On the first day of our food distribution programme in front of Hotel River View around 200 people came to take food. The number kept on increasing and it was finally increased to 2000 people. Earlier we used to send 1000 food packets to Zakir Nagar area, at an Ashram at Taimur Nagar, mandir at Khizrabad and at Pahlawan Chowk and few other places. We used to send food packets to these places but when we saw that the government started to provide food to these places then we stopped our distribution of food in these places gradually. When Zakir Nagar was sealed, we started to distribute food in houses where we came to know that food was required. Right now we are sending foods to Nai Basti where there are around 300 labourers. We are also sending foods to a madrasa where small children are there. So altogether we are sending around 1000-1200 food packets daily,” said Hafeez.
Hafeez further added, “During Ramadan we have shifted the time of distribution from afternoon to evening and we provide Iftaar along with food packets. Also we have tried that social distancing is followed strictly during food distribution. During the process of distribution of food packets we came to realise that even some well off people who have everything with them but cannot cook food and therefore they also needed some kind of help. I am happy that we could serve the people in need which gives a lot of satisfaction. In the whole process we came to realise that it was an important task to do.”