Dalit family rendered shelterless as house roof collapses in rain

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Kapurthala, August 18

The recent spell of rains has brought the life of a poor Dalit family at Bhawanipur village on the Goindwal road to a complete halt.

Ever since the roof of their house collapsed, they have been rendered shelterless and are forced to live under a tarpaulin put up in the verandah of their neighbours.

Bhupinder Kaur (46), a widow, her two daughters Prabhjot Kaur (22) and Geeta (19) and son Jodha Singh (17) have been forced to camp like this with their household items for the past 10 days and do not foresee any respite. The family, that has a meagre source of income from her occupation as part-time cook, neither has enough money to pay for rent anywhere else nor does it have any savings to re-construct a room in their 1.5-marla plot.

Bhupinder said, “My husband ran a small tea shop in the excise office, but he died of cancer about eight years ago. Whatever small savings we had, were spent on his treatment. My daughters are going to Hindu Kanya College and my son is in class XI. I am barely managing their fee expenditure to make sure that their studies do not get affected that our bare survival has become a problem. My kids have not gone for their studies for the past 10 days because of the injuries that we all suffered and the conditions we have been living in.”

She further rued, “Even our neighbours would not allow us to camp in their house for long. More than myself, I am worried about the security of my children. I have even approached sarpanch Kuldeep Singh, seeking some financial aid from him but to no avail. He has told me that there is so such scheme available but he would try some help through other resources.”

Congress MLA from Sultanpur Lodhi Navtej Cheema said he would visit the house tomorrow, meet the family and do whatever would be needful.