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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | City's poor condemned to another bitter winter by Ambika Pandit

City's poor condemned to another bitter winter by Ambika Pandit

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published Published on Nov 20, 2011   modified Modified on Nov 20, 2011

Three lives have been lost while several others had a narrow escape in fireaccidents that have so far claimed 16 night shelters between last year and now.

In the latest incident, a night shelter was destroyed in a fire early on Saturday morning leaving a nine-year-old girl charred to death. Worse still, like every year, the state government is scrambling to put in place a winter plan for the city's homeless as a temporary relief from thebiting cold of December and January.

While the state government's Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) is now harping on the need for more permanent shelters and creating temporary ones too in vacant buildings or porta cabins rather than hazardous tents, the ground reality is that in the last one year not even a single new permanent night shelter has appeared on the ground.
 
The Masterplan 2021 stipulates 1 shelter per 1 lakh population. Delhi has just 64 permanent shelters with a capacity to house 9,000 people. The city has an estimated homeless population of 1 lakh. The state-appointed Mother NGO on Homeless in an exercise last year recorded the presence 67,000 homeless people in the city.

With most of the permanent shelters under utilized, DUSIB has decided to engage NGOs to run the shelters while it is content to simply play a supervisory role.

According to senior officials, the NGOs will be assigned the task by next week. In a meeting held on Saturday, DUSIB has sought a list of sites where large numbers of homeless people congregate in order to establish how many temporary shelters are required.

Last year 84 temporary shelters were set-up but today just 16 of those remain . Out of 84 shelters 16 were lost in fire accidents and others wound up as occupancy was low and resources to run them were not forthcoming from the state, point out NGOs working with the homeless population. DUSIB CEO Chetan Sanghi who was handed the assignment as additional charge on Thursday said that permanent shelters will be a focus area.

"I think we will be able to deliver on our winter plan by December 1 or the first week of December at the most," Sanghi told TOI.

Paramjit Kaur from NGO Ashray Adhikar Abhiyan pointed that temporary shelters are just not fit for use beyond winter. "The tents were put up every year just to prevent people from dying in the biting cold. But they are certainly not safe for long term use," she added. Dr Amod Kumar from St Stephen's hospital, which is the state-appointed Mother NGO on Homeless also affirmed more permanent shelters as the solution. But wherever temporary shelters are required they should ideally be in permanent structures or at least be tents that are made up of fireresistant fabric and equipped to handle a fire.

The lack of permanent shelters is highlighted as a matter of grave concern in "Delhi Shelter Plan Report" compiled by NGOs and civil society organizations under the Right to Food case being heard in the Supreme Court.

The report states that 478 night shelters are needed to cater to all categories of homeless in the capital. The comprehensive study was carried out on the directions of Harsh Mandar, the Supreme Court commissioner on food security. The report was submitted to the court in July. Covering 190 locations and 175 concentrations identified across nine districts of Delhi, the survey found that nearly 40 of the existing shelters had less than 10% occupancy.

"The number of shelters being run in the city is much below the required figure. Currently, DUSIB runs 64 shelters. However, a large proportion of these shelters are not used by the homeless because of multiple deficiencies ," the report states. It also says that the Supreme Court mandates one shelter per one lakh population with 30 per cent shelters for special groups.

The Times of India, 20 November, 2011, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Citys-poor-condemned-to-another-bitter-winter/articleshow/10799570.cms


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