Councillor comes to starving slum dwellers’ rescue

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, March 29

There are several people in Ward No. 78 here who did not have anything to eat.

Their councillor Jagdish Samrai has come to their rescue. He has made a list of people who do not have anything to eat and distributed food packets to them here today.

Ward’s 80 per cent area is covered by slums and people are running out of food and ration. Samrai along with his team today prepared 150 packets. In each packet, there are 12 chapatis and cooked vegetable along with other eatables.

People have run out of their LPG cylinders and were unable to cook food for them.

Samrai said slum dwellers were out of jobs and there was nobody to help them.

“It is my duty to stand for them. Thus, I am making sure that nobody sleeps on an empty stomach,” he said.

He said several women from slum areas had approached him that they were suffering a lot. This would continue till this situation settles down.

“There is no NGO for this area. So, I, along with my team, has made sure to help them on my own,” he said.

To tackle the problem, Samrai had also took an initiative to visit each home with pamphlets that displays precautionary measures against the disease. The ward has several economically-weaker families. The Congress councillor had got 5,000 pamphlets printed for the purpose and also put up banners at various places in the ward.

“People here sit in large numbers to play cards, which is not advisable as cards change several hands. There is a need to aware and educate them as they are avoiding social distancing,” the councillor said, adding that he would advise them to clean hands and maintain distance from others.

He has been known for his fight for rights of his ward residents. A few days after becoming the councillor, Samrai sat on a dharna against the Municipal Corporation and that too for a genuine demand of providing safai karamcharis for the ward. Then he took a broom in his hands and started cleaning roads.

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.