Women and Child Development Minister Rakhi Birla spent an entire night out to get a first-hand feel of the awful condition of those living in various Government-run night shelters in the national Capital.
The youngest Minister in her Cabinet, 26-year-old Rakhi Birla, conducted a surprise inspection of various Government-run night shelter homes to assess their conditions and listened to the complaints of the dwellers there. According to the sources, she started out at 10.40 pm on Friday and continued her visits till 4.15 am.
“The conditions of the shelter homes are bad as they do not have any facilities. Sanitation is a major problem here,” Birla said. “And what was more shocking is that toilets in some of the houses are closed. Astonishingly, those in-charge of the shelters are not ashamed of lying on camera and are saying that they have not taken any money and were keeping the place clean, whereas it was visible how unhygienic and unclean the night shelters were,” she added.
“People at the shelters also complained about bad maintenance at these homes. Stench was pervasive at the homes and they were over-crowded,” sources said. She also sought explanations from the officials in charge to explain the condition. Birla visited shelters in Mangolpuri, Rajouri Garden, Azadpur in Adarsh nagar, Qutub Road, lori Gate among others. Birla has been making surprise checks at various government-run shelters ever since she took charge as a minister.
Earlier, Delhi Urban Development Minister Manish Sisodia on Friday informed that after conducting the inspection of entire Delhi, the 33 Sub Divisional Magistrates (SDMs) have found 212 such locations, where 4018 homeless people were found passing their nights. At some places, the SDMs found more than 100 homeless people in flocks passing nights, at some places 30-40 numbers of people and at many places, they found 15 to 20 homeless people.
Sisodia further said that the government has decided to construct 100 night shelters in Delhi. Some of the night shelters will be of bigger size accommodating 100 to 300 homeless people.