Since President Ramaphosa officially announced the lockdown ten weeks ago, and the Scientology Volunteer Ministers decided to assist the country with sanitization, 100 partnerships with various groups such as government offices, municipalities, taxis, clinics and hospitals and more have been signed to protect the country during the pandemic.
Starting by sanitizing their own Churches first, Scientology Volunteer Ministers soon found themselves overwhelmed with requests for help and having to plan how to cover all the demands – mostly at their own cost.
“We immediately got to work,” said Sandile Hlayisi, Public Affairs Director for the Volunteer Ministers. “And very soon, the calls started to come in for assistance and partnerships were signed.” Hlayisi stressed that their priority became helping those who cover essential services such as government offices, police stations, municipalities, hospitals and clinics and eventually the taxis.
A JMPD Police Officer from Soweto said, “Your sanitizing work is even more important now because the lockdown rules are being loosened up. This means more people are out and about. We feel we are more and more at risk when we go out. So you coming to sanitize makes us feel so much safer and better about the current situation. You know, we can see how important it is to maintain the sanitizing.”
A person from the Randfontein Department of Education commented, “I really have to take off my hat to you. You are doing all this on a voluntary basis and other people would charge a lot of money without even doing a good job. You are here on a voluntary basis doing a totally professional job! I am extremely grateful.”
An assistant at Basic Education said, “This is so touching. You serve places who really appreciate what you are doing. May the Almighty bless you and give you strength as you go place to place.”
Their partnership has now been established with 100 groups, including seven provincial government departments including Roads and Transport, Home Affairs and more, hundreds of shelters and houses for the vulnerable such as those for elderlies, disabled, orphans and homeless, Metropolitan Police, all Gauteng Municipalities and Emergency Services.
The Scientology Volunteer Ministers have sanitized more than 6100 buildings, mostly in Gauteng but more recently as well in KZN, Eastern Cape and Western Cape. They sanitized nearly 120,000 taxis, ambulances, fire trucks and police cars, with their highest record being to have sanitized a little over 7500 taxis in one day. Just this week, 40 people of faiths and NPO started to volunteer their time to assist on the sanitization too. Their strength comes from the Volunteer Minister technology written by L. Ron Hubbard for South Africa more than 50 years ago. They have so far provided 158,600 hours of volunteer work to the service of their community, working 12-15 hours a day, seven days a week for the last 71 days – time when the lockdown started.
