The shelter homes for migrants in Central Delhi face lack of good quality food and clean toilets, non-functional fans, rude behaviour of civil defence staff among other issues as per the key observations made by Delhi Police station house officers (SHOs), who were tasked to prepare a report on these establishments, The Indian Express has reported.
According to the report, the SHOs assessed more than 15 shelter homes.
Of these, the survey of two shelters at Majnu Ka Tilla and the posh Civil Lines revealed problems like non-functional fans, no power back-up, rare sanitisation of toilets, rude behaviour of civil defence staff, food quality not good, no hand wash and sanitisers, foul smell in toilets, water supply in the toilets only between 7 am and 11 am, one soap for bathing and no detergent for washing clothes, mosquito bites, etc, said the report.
The survey of three shelter homes by the staff of Lahori Gate police station in their area revealed that there were “no proper arrangements of drinking water” and no facilities such as reverse osmosis (RO) to serve treated water to the inmates, as per the report.
The SHOs further observed that many homeless persons “were forced to leave the homes” after the coronavirus-enforced lockdown and that is creating a lot of chaos in the adjoining areas, the police report stated.
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DCP (North) Monika Bhardwaj had asked the SHOs to survey the shelter homes after police observed a few problems at the centres. After getting survey reports from all the SHOs, she compiled the analysis and sent it to the District Magistrate (Central) Nidhi Shrivastava to seek government’s attention towards the issue, the report said.
A copy of the report “has been sent to all the sub-divisional magistrates to rectify the shortcomings,” Shrivastava told the publication.
Currently, there are 223 permanent shelter homes for the homeless in Delhi. Besides these, 111 government facilities, including school buildings, have been allocated as shelter homes to house migrants stuck in the city due to the lockdown, the report suggested.
These additional establishments are housing over 10,000 people, while the daily occupancy of the permanent ones reportedly stands at around 7,000.