Halal ready-to-eat meals for Rohingya refugees

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN (Borneo Bulletin/ ANN) - Cox's Bazar, a southern city in Bangladesh, where most of the Rohingya refugees are staying in camps, is witnessing a merciless cold wave. There is little to comfort in terms of food and shelter.

Two thousand miles away in Salambigar, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam, a container was loading Halal Chicken & Rice Meals Ready-to-Eat (MRE), manufactured in Brunei on the orders of a leading UK Charity.

Tayyib’s MREs are Brunei Halal certified, do not require any cooking, 100 per cent natural and are highly nutritional. Once they reach Cox’s Bazar, these meals will be a lifeline to many Rohingya refugees.

Saahtain Asia is a Brunei pioneering company in the region and has supported charities and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives globally since 2014.

Most aid is in the form of dry foods such as pulses (edible seeds) and rice. But for those caught up in wars and natural disasters and in the case of Rohingya, displaced over to another country, it can be difficult to get hold of clean water and means of cooking such dry foods.

“Imagine that you are sitting in a make-shift shelter with these dry rations in front of you. How are you going to cook? … (With) the absence of Halal food relief globally, where there is disaster, man-made or natural, it is next to impossible to get decent Halal food to people who need it,” said CEO of Saahtain Group, Adeel Khan.

Saahtain counts leading blue-chip corporates like HSBC, Citibank, PepsiCo amongst its clients who have executed effective CSR campaigns with their Tayyib Halal MREs.

“We see ourselves as a growing member of the Asean Islamic Economy,” said Khan. “Our business solves many pain points in the Halal food sector. From feeding Muslim travellers to Halal humanitarian food relief, we are at the forefront delivering innovative solutions.”

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