JOHOR BARU: Ponderosa Golf and Country Club (PGCC) has started contributing 300 packs of cooked food to charities engaged in distributing them to individuals and families which have suffered income and job losses due the Movement Control Order (MCO) imposed on March 18.
Under the umbrella of the Iskandar Malaysia Social Hero Awards (IMSHA), an entity that exerts a magnetic pull on many charities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the project is aimed at helping the less fortunate in society.
PGCC is working together with Yayasan Kebajikan Suria Johor Baru to get the food packs.
Recipients of the food packs are the manual labourers, petty traders, taxi or Grab drivers, school bus drivers, contract workers, and other daily paid workers who are bereft of sustenance due to the slowdown in work and businesses since the MCO.
"When the MCO began, PGCC and other subsidiaries under the Kuok Group contributed provisions and packed food to charitable organisations," said Tan Kai Ying, general manager of PGCC.
"But on learning about the rising number of people in our community who are going hungry, having exhausted whatever reserves they had, we are collaborating with groups of social workers under the IMSHA network," he said.
He said the contribution of 300 food packs daily would go on until June 9 when the fifth extension of the MCO is scheduled to end.
James Ho, founding chairman of Yayasan Kebajikan Suria Johor Baru, who has been working nonstop from the start of the MCO to help the needy, was elated at the PGCC's offer.
"It means happiness for 7,500 hungry people. With the cooked food, poor families can now stretch the rations that were given in earlier phases of the MCO and we can therefore move on to give rations to others we have not reached out to as yet," he said.
Currently, food is being distributed to areas such as Taman Molek, Taman Desa Harmoni, Permas Jaya, Johor Jaya, Plentong and Masai.
Since the imposition of the MCO on March 18 and the Conditional MCO on May 4, several NGOs have came together to form a network under the Social Hero Foundation. So far, 17 of these NGOs have been working tirelessly to support the needy in Johor.