CHANDIGARH : Caring for the urban shelter-less in this cold wintry weather, the Haryana Government has installed 26 portable cabins in nine districts of Haryana viz. Panchkula, Faridabad, Gurugram, Sonipat, Panipat, Yamunanagar, Kurukshetra, Bahadurgarh and Rohtak. These are besides 103 night shelters being run by the district administration, Red Cross, government departments and religious organizations.
Disclosing this here today, Haryana Urban Local Bodies Minister, Mrs Kavita Jain said these had been set up under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Urban Livelihoods Mission (DAYNULM) which has Shelter for Urban Homeless (SUH) as a vital component. The ULB Department is making earnest efforts to shelter the homeless.
Each permanent, all-weather shelter has provision of basic amenities like bed, bedding, blankets, recreation facilities, store room, clock room, caretaker, potable drinking water, toilets, bathrooms, first aid / basic medical facility and free/economically priced food for each homeless.
Regular cleaning and maintenance of the shelters is taken care of by managers and caretakers. At some places there are special shelters to cater to the most vulnerable groups such as single women and their dependent minor children, aged, infirm, disabled, mentally challenged etc.
She said the NULM sought to provide in a phased manner shelters equipped with basic facilities to the urban homeless who live with virtually no social security or shelter and have no access to elementary civic amenities such as health, education, food, water and sanitation.
The objectives of the Shelter for Urban Homeless component of NULM are to ensure availability and access of the urban homeless population to permanent shelters, including basic infrastructure facilities like water supply, sanitation, food, boarding and lodging along with ensuring safety and security.
It also seeks to cater to the needs of vulnerable segments of the urban homeless like dependent children, aged, disabled, mentally ill and recovering gravely ill, by creating special sections within homeless shelters and provisioning special service linkages for them; to provide access to various entitlements, viz. social security pensions, PDS, ICDS, identity, financial inclusion, education, affordable housing etc. for homeless population.
Besides, it seeks to formulate structures and framework of engagement for development, management and monitoring of shelters and ensuring basic services to homeless persons, by state and civil society organizations, including homeless collectives.
The department concentrates on places where the congregation of the poor is the highest, such as railway stations, bus depots, terminals, markets, wholesale mandis (market yards) etc, she added