A week after advocate Jayant Bhushan informed the Delhi High Court about the deaths of 279 people during the month of December alone, SAM:BKS is all geared up to carry out a survey to identify the spots where new shelter homes can come up to protect the city’s homeless from the brutal weather conditions in Delhi.
Even though the SAM: BKS or Shahri Adhikar Manch: Begharon Ke Saath (Urban Rights Forum: With the Homeless) has been asked by the high court to identify 57 new spots to set up shelter homes, (something which they were demanding for a long time), the organisation barely looks victorious.
“We had informed the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DSUIB) in September last year about the state of homeless in Delhi. They were well aware of the numbers and yet 279 people died in December. A lot of lives could have been saved if timely action was taken,” says Indu Prakash Jha of the SAM: BKS. Kamal Malhotra , director (Night Shelters) of DUSIB however claimed that ‘the number of deaths are not necessarily of homeless persons’ and added that some of them are destitute. “The numbers generated by police is based on the number of unidentified bodies found in the city which include deaths by accidents and so on,” Malhotra said.
Jha however believes otherwise. “Some of the deaths may have been motivated by crime or a result of accidents but an overwhelming majority is because of the harsh winters,” he said. This he attributes to the autopsy reports of the dead. He also said that most of the dead include labourers or as he calls them ‘the city makers’.
Information accessed by Metrolife suggests, in Delhi 84 shelters (out of which 102 are temporary) account for a mere 12.6 per cent of the proposed space for them under the Master Plan for Delhi – 2021 (MPD - 2021). In its survey, conducted in June last year, the DUSIB had found 16,760 homeless residents in 269 spots, of which over 11,000 were on the streets and 5,000 were in existing shelters. Figures that are being contested by Sunil Kumar Aledia of the Centre for Holistic Development (CHD).
“One per cent of the total population of Delhi is homeless which means a total of 1,80,000. The data given by DUSIB is incomplete and it is natural that the area allocated to the city’s homeless will be inadequate. This is the reason behind the court’s direction for conducting a new survey,” Aledia said.
He added that according to the National Urban Livelihood Mission’s Scheme for Shelters for the Urban Homeless (NULM-SUH), a total of 50 square feet is supposed to be allotted to each per person which would make each shelter home of 1000 square feet ideally fit to be used by 20 persons.
“The shelter homes have sometimes more than 50 people staying in them. In winters, the spread of communicable diseases is rampant and many in the homes fall sick. Moreover, due to the lack of space people are forced to stay on the streets where the chilling winter consumes them,” said Aledia.
Metrolife asked if the activists believed that the lack of government in the Capital has actually worsened the situation. “The number of deaths is the highest in four years but the fact remains that government or no government, the homeless are always
neglected,” Jha concluded.
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