Montreal’s Sikh Vision Association has been helping the community since 2011, usually doing food drives for the homeless in the summer and blood drives to support those in need.
Since March 20, the association has switched gears and is providing basic ingredients for cooking due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“People are really in need, a lot of people who are sick and actually affected by this COVID-19, we receive the calls saying they can’t go out,” volunteer Rupinder Singh says.
Three items are being handed out: flour, rice and beans.
“It’s nowhere to be found in the shops, it’s backorder, these are basic ingredients that people need in order to cook,” said Parminder Singh Dulay, co-founder of the Sikh association.
Singh Dulay is also the president of On-Time Transport, a trucking company that specializes in delivering goods.
“We buy some from Montreal and Toronto, we go pick up from Toronto once a week,” Singh Dulay told Global News.
“We load the trailers, we put it in the trucks and then we deliver it to the people.”
These days, drivers can barely keep up with demand, he added.
“We do around anywhere between 30-40 deliveries a day, seven days a week, but sometimes we are over 300 deliveries in a week.”
International students have reached out to the Sikh association asking for help.
“They can’t afford to go back because they have to finish their schooling and they really need help on the food,” Singh Dulay said.
For Karandeep Singh, an international student studying in Montreal, it’s been hard to balance the semester and keep up with eating meals.
This is the only way for him to get flour and rice to be able to cook homemade meals, Singh said.
“It’s been very difficult — every store, we have no flour and rice and I also have problems that I can’t eat outside food so I only use cooked food at home.”
Singh Dulay says cases like that remind him his services are essential.
“When we go out delivering to the people we really feel it, that they really need it,” he said.
“We can see it each day; they’re new to Canada and they got no jobs. No money coming in and they got no food.”
The Montreal Sikh Vision Association says they will continue to support those in need for the duration of this pandemic by delivering rice, beans and flours seven days a week. They invite anyone in need to contact them through Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SIkh-Vision-Association-Montreal-913241238706931/.