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Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves. (iWN file photo)
Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves. (iWN file photo)

The government of St. Vincent and the Grenadine will distribute “Love Boxes” of agricultural produce to about 3,000 persons every two weeks.

The food is expected to help persons who have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s a fantastic programme.  We’re getting the 40lb banana boxes, traditional boxes, it’s all within the 10 principles which I had outlined in the Good Neighbour Partnership,” Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said on NBC radio on Wednesday.

“Farmers have produce, we buy the produce, some people want food and we give them,” he said.

He said that the ministry will announce the location of the distribution centres “where people will come, individuals can go and buy from the farmers, too, but the government is buying from the farmers and we are proving these Love Boxes of food, 3,000 of them to persons who are deserving.”

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Gonsalves said that the Ministry of Social Development is involved in identifying persons.

“… but very much so the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs through the churches and through the NGOs. The government is not distributing these,” Gonsalves said, adding that distribution will be rationalised.

“So we don’t have control over who gets.  It’s not a red box; it’s a love box, so I just want to make that point for those who always look for something other than what it is.”

Gonsalves’ Unity Labour Party uses red in its paraphernalia and election campaign and “Labour Love” was the party’s slogan in the 2015 general elections.

“Love is love. It’s an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempest and is never shaken. That is what love is,” said Gonsalves, quoting Shakespeare.

“It doesn’t matter if Soufriere erupt, storm come, COVID comes, you love, you love. It’s an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempest and is never shaken and this love that we have for the people is never shaken and manifested in the love box,” he said.

The prime minister said the programme has caught the imagination of people “because it’s something which reflects the times and where we are trying to build social solidarity so that as we come out of COVID and the way we have been handling COVID with such calm and with such patience, dealing with it with the certainty that sun brightens stone and all the river burns and we are with the people as one and we know that some of our people are suffering as a consequence of COVID.

“We didn’t bring it upon ourselves, it came to us from outside but we are satisfied that whatever our anguish and our pain, we know that the Lord’s compassion failed not and there is an abundance of mercy which is renewed daily and great is his faithfulness. And this is the way in which we are operating and addressing this question,” Gonsalves said.

6 replies on “Gov’t to hand out ‘Love Boxes’ of food”

  1. It is not at all surprising that our Churches are so wretchedly ineffective in our land when they are inclined to get into bed with Government. Church and state, for our good, ought to be thoroughly separate. Leaders of the established Churches here ought not to allow themselves to be a useful tool of the state.

    When Churches becomes engulfed in state matters, their effectiveness in dealing with their prime functions thus becomes utterly questionable, thereby “losing their candlesticks”. And that is if they were ever given any in the first place!

  2. Well, look how Gonsalves is playing with people dignity. “So we don’t have control over who gets. It’s not a red box; it’s a love box, so I just want to make that point for those who always look for something other than what it is.”

  3. Is this offer to us of a LOVE BOX to be the “perfect gift” from a government that has an election in mind? Is this to be the show of love from a godless and heartless Marxist regime?

    What other gifts can we in SVG expect after the election is thus passed? Perhaps good economic prosperity with equally good sustainable jobs. Jobs that has so eluded the regime for near on twenty years.
    https://www.metropolitantabernacle.org/Sermons-on-James/God%E2%80%99s-Perfect-Gift

    Can we expect a secure and clean living environment and some government accountability? Parliamentary accountability from a regime that always only have time for us when election is on the horizon?

  4. When will the lumber, galvernize, cement toilet, money, pig and the other hands out will be given away? It appears that we are being studied, and some people think that we have no self esteem , morale , interigity and can be easily fooled. So sad. A day will come.

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