THE JHARKHAND STORY NETWORK
Daltonganj, Dec 22: The Ashray Grih, under the aegis of Deen Dayal Antodaya Yojna Rashtriya, managed and run by the Medininagar municipal corporation, remains ’empty of the occupants’ most of the days/ nights of the month.
It’s an acute winter in Daltonganj with cold waves. Despite this, the Ashray Grih has few takers at night.
There are 12 beds here with full bed rolls and blankets. Mercury light removes the monotony—a clean toilet for the occupants.
There is no taker to such free service. This Ashray Grih is for the roadside sleepers, destitute, homeless and vagabonds.
All that they have to do is to walk in and get entered in a register there. The warm night awaits them. In summer, it is a mosquito-free night.
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Today, this correspondent spoke to the Medininagar municipal corporation city commissioner Md Jawed Hussain, a 2019 batch IAS officer.
He conceded that the occupancy rate to the Ashray Grih could be better. People with low incomes and the roofless do not come here.
Hussain said, “We send out our rescue team at night to persuade the sleepers in the open to come to the Ashray Grih, but in vain. The sleepers under the sky are so rooted to their few feet either on the platform, at the bus stand, or under the shed of any multi-storeyed building to come to the Ashray Grih.”
The Ashray Grih is for the males, but efforts are on to have a safe and secured enclosure for women destitute.
There are three lunatics in Daltonganj, and nobody knows where they spend their winter nights.
He said we would have a bonfire before the Ashray Grih to make people experiencing homelessness spend the night in bed with a blanket over them.
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