Mahinda Karunaratne Chairman Karuna Trust

 It’s exactly six months ago we made an appeal to our donors and
well-wishers requesting donations for our COVID  19 relief work.
There we got a very good response for it and with that donations we
severed 3412 families.

Unfortunately, the second wave came up five weeks ago and by now it
has spread all over the country. This wave is much more powerful than
the first one and It’s spreading very fast. Within these five weeks
over 9000 positive patients have been identified.

Entire Gampaha District and many police station controlling areas have
been under curfew for the last 35 days. Entire Western Province has
been under curfew for the last seven days. Under this situation there
are thousands of daily wage workers, small vendors, and visiting
housemaids who work on daily wages are having a hard life. Also there
are several thousands of three-wheel drivers who are not the owners of
the three-wheels but they run others three-wheels where they have to
pay a daily fixed amount whether they have the income or not. Now most
of the people are not traveling in three-wheels and in taxies.

After a study we decided to give a parcel of dry ration to such
families. So we allocated rupees one million from our cataract surgery
fund to buy the goods. We have already given an order to Sathos, the
Government owned consumer goods distributor, where we will be getting
a special discount if we do the distribution through the Divisional
Secretaries. Each parcel costs Rs.2116.00. Already we have ordered 500
parcels which we will be getting only on the 9th Monday.

We can’t make any request from our donors to make a donation for the
second time. It’s not even six months gone after their first donation.
It’s the wish of the donors whether to join with us for the second
time to help the neediest who suffer without food. If anyone gives we
accept it with great respect and use it to give dry ration for the
neediest people.

This morning, two of our local donors, each of them have deposited
Rs.25000.00 after hearing that we have started distributing dry
ration. Also a Los Angeles based US NGO who always supports our
activities has deposited US$.1500.00 to our account without any
request.

Herewith we have attached a few memories of our previous COVID 19 relief work.

With metta,

Mahinda Karunaratne
Chairman
Karuna Trust