BY his own admission, Gull Mansukhani came to Jamaica from India with nothing 41 years ago. Now he is a successful businessman with a burning desire to help the people of the country which has done so much for him.

“Jamaica has given me everything, so I think it is my time to give back to Jamaica. I have created a foundation in the names of my mother Veena, and my son Vijay — the Veena/Vijay [V] Mansukhani Foundation — because I realised that I don’t want to do small projects, I want to do big projects,” Mansukhani told the Jamaica Observer on Tuesday.

“I am a guy who came to Jamaica 41 years ago and I used to work with a company, and little by little I have gone on my own. I have grown to become a businessman,” added Mansukhani.

His philanthropic work officially started in March 2022 when he partnered with the Indian High Commission in Jamaica and Member of Parliament for St Andrew East Rural Juliet Holness to organise a health fair in Papine, St Andrew.

More than 360 people were seen at the health fair and Mansukhani was overjoyed to see the difference it made in the lives of those most in need.

Later that year Mansukhani handed out $2 million in scholarships to a medical student and a nursing student who were struggling to pay their school fees.

That followed the death of his son in April 2022 from complications related to asthma. As an asthmatic himself, Mansukhani organised a donation of 450 nebulisers to public hospitals and other facilities islandwide.

“A lot of machines were there but were not working in hospitals, but I didn’t know. I just did this because my son died. I didn’t know that Jamaica needed this. I just said, ‘Let me give some nebulisers’, only to find out that there was a big shortage of nebulisers in hospitals,” said Mansukhani.

His next major project was to come in 2023 through a chance encounter with a newspaper article with the picture of child using a bottle of ice to cool himself at Farm Primary and Infant School in St James.

According to Mansukhani, that image sparked his concern about the heat in the classrooms across the island.

“I called the school about eight o’clock in the morning and asked them how many fans they had and they said they had no fans. So I asked them how many do they need and the lady said, ‘I need 20’, and I said, ‘Okay, I am sending it to you tomorrow, my truck will bring it tomorrow.’

“While I was doing that I sent a small note to my friends with the newspaper article to see if anybody else could help,” Mansukhani told the Observer.

“I sent it to the Indian community, and my Jamaican friends, and by one o’clock in the afternoon we had collected enough funds to buy 465 fans. I didn’t have any fans in stock myself, so I went and bought it on the market, and on behalf of the Indian community we presented them to schools.

“You know 465 was not a big number, but it was a big number for us because it wasn’t planned, it was just an article I saw that made me do it,” added Mansukhani.

He later visited Freetown Primary in Clarendon to hand over some fans and the condition there, with the heat in the classroom, prompted him to expand the project.

“When I saw what was happening in every classroom there were no fans there and I don’t know how the children could study… and I decided that in 2024 I would take it on me to bring 2,500 fans and give to schools right across Jamaica, which we have done already.

“I plan to continue this same project next year because schools need fans and they don’t have fans. We are committed to giving another 2,500 fans to schools across Jamaica,” Mansukhani said as he noted that he spent $14 million this year to get the fans and distribute them.

He pointed out that he gifts the fans to Members of Parliament on both sides of the political divide who then distribute them to schools in their constituencies.

Not satisfied with his donation of fans to the schools, Mansukhani has also committed 200 fans to the Jamaica Constabulary Force to be placed in police stations across the island.

“We are also giving footballs to youngsters in inner-city communities across Jamaica, so these youngsters can engage themselves in games, rather than falling into a wrong life where they end up getting in trouble,” said Mansukhani.