Business, charity sectors collaborate on securing food aid for KZN

Milk and bread loaded into a vehicle to deliver to the needy in the Umgeni Road area in Durban.

At least 20 businesses, NGOs and NPOs – including Muslims for Humanity and the Natal Memon Jamaat Foundation (NMJ) – collaborated on the initiative to support those impacted by hunger as a result of damaged infrastructure and looted shops in the greater Durban area.

Mohamed Gany, chairman of NMJ, said that plans to bring much needed foodstuffs to Durban from Gauteng had begun on Tuesday night. He said that to avoid crowded distribution points, various community organisations and individual businesses in Durban had pooled resources to take the bread and milk into different communities from a central point in the city on Thursday.

According to Mohamed Riaz Fakie, marketing coordinator for SANZAP, who was manning one of the distribution points on Thursday morning, various organisations had been inundated with calls offering help from Gauteng and a last minute decision had been taken to work together to load the much needed foodstuffs on trucks headed for Durban.

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Getting to Durban from Gauteng safely

He said various businesses and community organisations in Gauteng had funded both the food and the private security contingent that had been needed to get the milk and bread to Durban from Gauteng safely.

Fakie said that it was hoped that the dire food shortages that were gripping the city in the wake of the destruction of retail outlets, factories and warehouses, could be resolved as soon as supply chains could be restored.

On Thursday, Muslims for Humanity, in collaboration with various NGO’s and charitable organisations in Durban distributed 40 000 loaves of fresh bread and 40 000 litres of milk to the needy in KwaZulu-Natal.