Karachi: Sindh Governor Imran Ismail recently visited ‘the world’s longest restaurant on wheels’ in Karachi.
The mobile restaurant has been providing free meals twice a day. The people are also allowed to take away as many parcels of free meals as they like for their family members who are not able to reach the restaurant.
The restaurant is housed in a shipping container specially equipped to be used as a kitchen and dine-in facility. A non-profit JDC Foundation Pakistan has been running this novel charitable venture since the start of Ramadan.
The mobile restaurant placed on a trailer has been parked outside Karachi’s biggest public sector hospital, the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre. There are two other major public hospitals close by - the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases and National Institute of Child Health.
The restaurant serves free meals to a large number of people, belonging to other cities of Sindh, who accompany patients to visit these hospitals for treatment.
Since the first day of Ramadan, the Sheri and Iftar meals are being given to the needy people. Up to 15,000 people have been getting two meals every day.
The restaurant provides seating facility for 35 people at a time to dine in. Since April 26, the restaurant is not providing dine-in facility and has only been giving out food parcels due to the coronavirus-related lockdown restrictions imposed by the government.
Syed Zafar Abbass, General-Secretary of JDC Foundation, said that services of expert chefs earlier associated with five-star hotels had been hired.
He said the meals were prepared in hygienic conditions. Milk shakes, fresh juices, and fruits are part of the free meals service.
In all, the JDC Foundation provides such free meal service at 14 different locations of Karachi.
Sindh Governor inspected the kitchen facility of the mobile restaurant and took part in the cooking process by frying samosas as a part of the Iftari meal service.
Talking to media persons on the occasion, the Sindh Governor said that he would help procure support for the JDC Foundation from the federal and provincial governments to run such charitable ventures.
He said the free mobile restaurant had been established by a non-profit on a self-help basis but it matched the vision of the present federal government that stands for not letting any poor person go to bed hungry.
He said the government had the resolve to provide utmost support to all such noble philanthropic work in the country.
