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Three quality meals a day at shelter homes

Bandhua Mukti Morcha Vs Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board & Ors | High Court of Delhi | Status: Pending | |

On 25.9.2020, Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board held its 29th meeting where the board considered and approved the agenda for providing 3 free meals a day including breakfast to the homeless at shelter homes in Delhi on the recommendation of this Hon’ble Court in ‘Gulshan Khatun & Ors v. Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board & ors’, WP(C) No.3570/2020 vide order dated 27.8.2020.

However, with great regret, it is stated that the homeless are yet to receive 3 meals a day including breakfast at the shelter homes. Only lunch and dinner is served and people including children are denied breakfast. The decision of the board to provide breakfast was taken way back in September 2020 and more 7 months have passed but breakfast is not being provided at the shelter homes.

Further, a second wave of covid-19 pandemic is raging in Delhi pursuant to which a lockdown has been imposed by the Delhi Government restricting movement of workers. Resultantly, workers are not able to gain employment and are suffering economically. Most of the workers staying at shelter homes don’t have any documentation. Some are interstate migrant workers who don’t have a Delhi based Ration card. Therefore, the workers have little means to feed themselves and their children. 

The number of Covid-19 cases are increasing everyday infecting people from all sections of the society. Homeless people are particularly vulnerable to the Covid-19 virus due to their exposure and low immunity. In the shelter homes, people are reported to be sick however, the isolation centres which were running in 2020 have been closed.

People residing at shelter homes are mostly homeless and are at the bottom of the poverty ladder who have suffered generations of privations, are engaged in informal sector with meagre incomes, have poor or in some cases nil healthcare and social security benefits, and constantly face discrimination, hunger, violence and injustice. Therefore, it is responsibility of the state to provide them with minimum basic facilities like food and vaccine



Attachments

    https://slic.org.in/uploads/2021/05-May/14-Fri/order%207-5-2021.pdf