Le Van Phong in District 8 directly came to fields in Long An Province to buy the dragon fruit. The fruit is sold at VND500 per kilo, but Long paid VND3,500 per kilo to help partially compensate growers for their losses.
Phong then transported the fruit to HCM City. Part of the fruit has been sold at cheap prices in District 5, while the remainder is offered free of charge to facilities that provide free meals in the district.
Nguyen Thanh Hoang who specialises in giving charitable meals to the poor in District 1 said he had distributed the free dragon fruit to residents after receiving them from Phong.
Another charitable kitchen operated by Nguyen Thi Cuong in District 1 had also provided free dragon fruit to poor workers around Ben Thanh Market.
People queued in long lines to get dragon fruit near Ben Thanh Market.
According to Hoang, on the first day, he distributed a tonne of dragon fruit to people. On Friday, the figure increased to two tonnes. On the same day, he also gave 500 sets of charitable meals to poor workers.
Currently, thousands of container trucks transporting Vietnamese farm produce, including fresh fruit, are stranded at border gates with China due to the country’s tighter control over goods for Covid-19 prevention.
The northern province of Lang Son has announced a halt to receiving container trucks transporting fresh fruit to local border gates for export to China from January 17 until the coming Lunar New Year Festival.
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