Con­scious of the so­cial cri­sis in the coun­try due to COVID-19 re­stric­tions, a bak­ery own­er has turned his ovens back on to pro­duce bread for the needy— free of charge.

He em­barked on the first day of his ini­tia­tive on Good Fri­day.

Bak­er Naran­dra­dath Jaikaran, the own­er of Clas­sic Bakes Bak­ery, do­nat­ed 1,100 hops to non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions to dis­trib­ute to the peo­ple ex­pe­ri­enc­ing fi­nan­cial hard­ship.

In keep­ing with Good Fri­day tra­di­tions, he al­so baked 100 hot cross buns and even gave a few to the po­lice.

While the re­sponse to this has been over­whelm­ing, Jaikaran said, for now, he would on­ly be bak­ing on a Fri­day. He is hop­ing that the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty will come on board so he could in­crease his pro­duc­tion and help more fam­i­lies.

Even be­fore the Gov­ern­ment had ini­ti­at­ed the Stay-at-Home reg­u­la­tions, Jaikaran had closed his busi­ness as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure.

He de­cid­ed to launch this ini­tia­tive af­ter his el­dest son, who re­sides in Cana­da, told him about a sim­i­lar ven­ture be­ing done by bak­ery own­ers in that coun­try.

“We have been closed since March 26. I spoke to the fam­i­ly, my oth­er son, and wife, I spoke to my em­ploy­ees and we all came to­geth­er with the un­der­stand­ing that we should do this, it is a great ini­tia­tive. I sup­port it be­cause I love to give and when you give, es­pe­cial­ly when you give from your heart to per­sons in need it re­al­ly feels good and it is a good thing for peo­ple.”

Us­ing so­cial me­dia plat­forms and What­sApp, he ad­ver­tised the ini­tia­tive and in­vit­ed his con­tacts, NGOs and oth­er groups to con­tact him. Since then, he said, he has been flood­ed with calls and mes­sages from church­es, MPS, var­i­ous homes, even in­di­vid­u­als, in­clud­ing Venezue­lans.

He ad­mit­ted that this ven­ture will be cost­ly, es­pe­cial­ly since his busi­ness is closed.

How­ev­er, he is hop­ing that the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty comes on board.

“My son cre­at­ed a web­site clas­sicbakes.com, if peo­ple want to join us, we can ex­tend the spread, plus we think we will like to add food ham­pers. Peo­ple are in need out there, peo­ple are hun­gry, peo­ple are call­ing me, peo­ple are cry­ing, peo­ple can’t pay rent, they got three kids, hus­band not work­ing and it is very sad to sit down and when you eat you re­alise there are peo­ple out there hun­gry, can I not share some­thing with them please.”

He said peo­ple have sup­port­ed his busi­ness for 20 years and he saw it fit to give back. “And we are not fo­cus­ing on­ly in this com­mu­ni­ty, we in­vit­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go. Once you can make arrange­ments to col­lect the bread find us.”

Step Up and Reach Out, a char­i­ty group op­er­at­ed by Ken­neth Now­elling and his wife, Jan­ice, was one of the or­gan­i­sa­tions which col­lect­ed bread.

Now­elling praised Jaikaran for this ini­tia­tive and called on oth­er busi­ness peo­ple to fol­low in his foot­steps. They will be dis­trib­ut­ing the bread to needy per­sons in the Clax­ton Bay com­mu­ni­ty.