A rich Australian man gave away $100 in cash to scores of people standing near a Centrelink office in Melbourne.
These people were the ones who went jobless due to the corona-induced lockdown.
Good Samaritan Peter Darmos, priorly known by the alias John, handed a $100 note to every one of the people queuing outside the Centrelink office, Box Hill.
He called the notes “lettuce leaves” and said that the sight of the plight of the jobless workers had left him “feeling sick to the stomach.”
“These are all innocent people with no means to put some bread on the table for their family,” he told 3AW on Friday.
“Their Centrelink payments aren’t until next week. They need to put food on the table tonight.”
Darmos, a 62-year-old man from Balwyn North, drove all the way to his bank and waited in the lobby for nearly an hour before he withdrew $10,000 from his account.
He then went to the Centrelink office and distributed every last of the notes he had among the people waiting inside and outside the office.
“The gratitude, the tears in peoples’ eyes, it was unbelievable,” said Darmos. “I had to do that because these people need instant relief. They can’t wait for tomorrow or the day after.”
Speaking to the Herald Sun, he said: “I couldn’t stand to see my kids fed and others starve. This is a tragedy of profound proportion.”
Darmos who emigrated to Australia from Greece at a very young age is a successful businessman now.
He asked other well-to-do Australian citizens to play their role in supporting people who have lost their jobs due to coronavirus.
“We can all hit the Centrelink offices across the country in 30 seconds today and hand out a lettuce leaf to each person in need so they can put some food on the table for their families,” said Darmos.
“This country has been good to me, and my heart goes out to these people who are really suffering.”
Due to businesses being shut down because of coronavirus, it is expected that hundreds of thousands of Australians will lose their jobs and will be needing financial assistance to make the ends meet.
Workers who had been fired from Centrelink assembled in the company’s office earlier this week to get the unemployment welfare grant.
According to the estimates by economists, 814,000 Australians will be unemployed by the end of June.
Daniel Andrews, the premier of Victoria, said the Centrelink queues are not the worst outcome of this situation.
“What we don’t want is queues for people who need a machine to help them breathe,” he said while speaking at an event in Melbourne on Wednesday.
“We cannot have people queuing for intensive care beds. That will mean they will die. We’ve got to buy time … if you can stay home, you must stay home.
“No dinner party, no shopping trip is worth a life.”
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