A donation of about 175,000 masks arrived at the Richmond City Hall last Friday to ensure Richmond frontline workers and students have enough personal protective equipment to battle the COVID-19 pandemic.
The donation was made possible through collaboration between the Richmond Lions Club and Sunwins Health, a Vancouver-based surgical mask manufacturing company.
Among those masks, 150,000 masks will be given to students from the Richmond School District and 25,000 masks will be distributed to essential workers at the city.
Michael Ching, president of Sunwins Health, showed up at the donation ceremony.
Ching, also known as Cheng Muyang and Ching Mo-yeung, made news a few years ago. As a wealthy Vancouver-based property developer, he had been fighting for refugee status in Canada. According to Immigration and Refugee Board documents, he was wanted by Chinese agencies for alleged embezzlement. Ching has always denied accusations of embezzlement in China, claiming his confessions were made under torture.
As of September 2016, the Interpol, an organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and crime control, delisted Ching as an international fugitive. He received his Canadian citizenship in December 2020.
Pan Qi, the marketing director of Sunwins Health, said despite the increase in vaccination rates, people still need to remember to maintain social distancing and wear masks. Hopefully, these donations will help reduce the spread of the COVID-19, she added.
This isn’t Sunwins Health’s first mask donation in Richmond. On April 23, the company donated 15,000 masks to more than 400 low-income seniors from Kiwanis Towers.
