Soup kitchen for displaced, street people delayed
THE soup kitchen, announced earlier this year, to cater for 2,500 persons daily, will not, after all, be opened this month.
Minister of Human Services and Social Security, Ms. Priya Manickchand said, Thursday, it seems unlikely. The ministry is collaborating with the makers of Bakewell bread to construct the facility in Brickdam, next to The Palms geriatric home.
Speaking, at her Cornhill Street Ministry, also in Georgetown, after the presentation to Stabroek News journalist Gaulbert Sutherland, who won the Media Trends Award, Manickchand said Bakewell is, currently, putting up the physical structure of the soup kitchen.
She reminded that Government is in no way funding the project and Mr. Naeem Nasir, owner of Bakewell, is in the process of procuring materials for its completion.
“The frame is up. It is just a matter of filling in that frame and I think he (Nasir) is procuring materials to do that now. The last time we had spoken, he had said August but I don’t think, as a lay person who is not too experienced in engineering business, that it can finish in August. We are already halfway through August and it doesn’t look like it can be done,” the minister stated.
Last March, Manickchand had said the kitchen will provide meals for 2,500 daily including, but not limited, to persons who find themselves displaced and on the streets.
It is expected that beneficiaries will have access to bathroom and shower facilities and personal assistance, a fresh change of clothes and the food will be served, free of cost, from 11:00 hrs to 15:00hrs daily. A take-away bowl would also be provided.
In a press release, Nasir had said that providing a soup kitchen has always been a dream and Manickchand noted that the Government was “extremely pleased” to be engaging with a member of the Private Sector to further provide service to Guyana’s people and would welcome other such initiatives by other persons.
Efforts to contact Bakewell officials for an update yesterday proved futile as this news paper was only told that the kitchen “is a personal project.”