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City's homeless need emergency tents

Last Updated 04 January 2015, 01:46 IST

There is a dire need to set up “emergency” tent shelters in north and west Delhi to prevent destitutes from braving the chill in the open, said an umbrella organisation working for the cause.

“We had sent a list of 44 sites to Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board in September to put up temporary shelter homes, but the city body has been slack in taking action,” said Shahri Adhikar Manch: Begharon Ke Saath — a network of 20 organisations working for the homeless.

The DUSIB said it has set up tents in 12 such places and have provided a sufficient number of temporary shelter homes across Delhi.

“We have already put up over 245 shelter homes in the city,” said a senior official with DUSIB. “We are continuously monitoring the areas where the density of homeless population is more and are in the process of putting up additional shelters,” added the official.

But the NGOs said the tents set up by the DUSIB can only accommodate around 15 people each.

“There is a demand of a shelter for over 100 people but the DUSIB has provided space for only 15 people,” said Indu Prakash Singh, executive committee member of Shahri Adhikar Manch.

The NGOs said if the DUSIB had taken action in time, many lives would have been saved. “When we were on night walk yesterday, we found that over 60 people were sleeping in the open in Rohini. We had asked the DUSIB in September to set up a shelter there, but in vain,” added Singh.

“There is an urgent need to put up emergency tent shelters on these 44 sites to save destitutes from the biting cold,” he added.

Some 279 unidentified bodies were found in the city in December, a bulk of them were of the homeless persons, he said.

The NGO has written to Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung.
“We have been carrying out night vigils in the last one week and we found that there is still dearth of shelter homes. Temporary shelters are still missing from under the flyover. You (LG) had declared that tents under flyovers would soon come up,” said the letter.

“Most of the caretakers keep sleeping at night by zipping up the tents and locking the gates of shelter homes from inside,” it added.

The areas proposed by the NGO to set up tent shelters included Janakpuri West, Rani Garden, Vikas Marg, Laxmi Nagar, Rithala, Krishan Kunj, Nizamuddin Dargah, LNJP Hospital, Yamuna Pusta, among other areas.
DH News Service

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(Published 04 January 2015, 01:46 IST)

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