De­spite hav­ing closed its doors on April 6, 2020, ow­ing to manda­to­ry COVID-19 lock­down re­stric­tions, Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd.(PHL), the lo­cal fran­chisee for KFC, Piz­za Hut, TGI Fri­days, Sub­way and Star­bucks, is giv­ing its hourly-paid em­ploy­ees ham­pers and chick­en.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny PHL, in con­junc­tion with the Sal­ly & Vic­tor Mout­tet Foun­da­tion and Arawak Co Ltd, un­der­took a char­i­ty ini­tia­tive aimed at bring­ing some re­lief to those work­ers ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by restau­rant clo­sures through the pack­ing and prepa­ra­tion of 2,700 ham­pers and chick­ens, which will be dis­trib­uted to­day.

“Ear­li­er to­day, Arawak Chick­en trucks were seen on the na­tion’s road­ways de­liv­er­ing truck­loads of chick­ens as part of the char­i­ta­ble ef­fort, while scores of en­thu­si­as­tic PHL work­ers and man­age­ment, don­ning masks and gloves, were busy re­ceiv­ing, sort­ing and putting the fi­nal touch­es on the 2,700 care pack­ages des­tined for staff homes across Trinidad and To­ba­go. The plan is to dis­trib­ute a fur­ther 500 ham­pers next week.” the com­pa­ny told Guardian Me­dia.

The Vic­tor & Sal­ly Mout­tet Foun­da­tion, named af­ter found­ing mem­bers of the VEM­CO Group, was es­tab­lished in 2018. Its con­tribut­ing mem­bers are Agos­ti­ni’s Lim­it­ed, PHL and Vic­tor E. Mout­tet Lim­it­ed. In re­sponse to the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, they have con­tributed $3 mil­lion to char­i­ta­ble ef­forts, $1 mil­lion in sup­port of the PHL staff ini­tia­tive and a fur­ther $2 mil­lion via NGOs and re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions