The Sikh community has won praise yet again for providing meals for thousands of stranded truck drivers at the UK-France border. A volunteer army of British Sikhs jumped to the rescue when France closed down its borders to travellers from the UK till they showed a negative Covid-19 test report. Up to 10,000 drivers were stranded in South England, which is when several Sikhs stepped forward and helped them out by serving hot food.
(Also Read: Sikh Volunteers Prepare Over 30,000 Free Meal Packets In New York)
Packaged meals served included chickpea curry and rice, along with bottled water. A Twitter clip showed 800 meals on their way to the stranded lorry drivers from Khalsa Aid. They also worked with a Dominos franchise to provide 1000 pizzas to the drivers.
Ravinder Singh, the founder of Khalsa Aid, said, "We in Sikhism, we have the concept of langar, which means community kitchen. We are British Sikhs and the least we can do is to practise our seasonal goodwill: two days from Christmas we have people on our soil who are homeward bound and do not know what is happening."
The relief to the truck drivers comes just days ahead of Christmas. Many touted the wonderful effort by the Sikh group in keeping with the spirit of the festive season, even though they may not be able to celebrate the festival with family this time. "They [the drivers] were very appreciative but you could see they were down as they were unsure if they would get home for Christmas," said Singh.