Awareness campaign for ‘Right to Night Shelters’ launched in Delhi, street-dwellers to be educated

New Delhi: Before the winters set in, a unique awareness campaign was launched by Delhi State Legal Services Authority in the national capital on Tuesday to address the problems of street-dwellers.

The campaign would strive to bring those living on streets into Night shelters, thereby mitigating their daily rigours on streets, especially during winters.

While flagging off the campaign, Delhi State Legal Services Authority officials said that the night shelter scheme is for the poor but most of them are unaware of this facility.

The Delhi State Legal Services Authority has taken upon the responsibility to educate those extremely deprived and marginalised class and spread awareness among them about night shelter facility in the city. They will be encouraged to utilize these public amenities rather than living on streets.

“People are sleeping on road footpaths because they don’t know about schemes like these. If we can help one person everyday this scheme will be successful. As Gandhi ji said, government services must reach to the last person in queue,” Sh Dinesh Kumar Sharma, Chairperson, DLSA(ND) said.

Sh Kanwal Jeet Arora, Member Secretary, DSLSA explained that ”effort of DSLSA is not only to aware and take street dwellers to rain basera but with authorities concerned to extend benefit of various schemes to them and also efforts will made to give vocational training to people residing in rain basera as well as to assist them in getting placement.”

How the Rain Basera iniatitive will work

Under this unique initiative, the road dwellers will also be transported to night shelters across the city.

Those seeking refuge in night shelters can call customer care number 1516 and get transported to one such shelter. Auto and mini-buses have been roped in to facilitate their transfer from streets to ‘rain baseras’.

The night shelters will not only make their life easy but will also ensure safe drinking water, hygienic food, clean toilets, security of their belongings. While staying in night shelters, they can also avail benefits of the government schemes.