Covid Crisis Relief Work

The outbreak of the corona virus was identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and the world health organization in January 2020 declared it to be a public health emergency of international concern. On March 11, 2020 it was recognized as a pandemic. This changed our lives and world completely over a period of few months. Many a times the city is struck by events and happenings that create history and memories and which determine the direction future events will take. Similarly since March 2020 onwards, the city of Mumbai has been dealing with the crisis of covid-19.

The whole city is under lockdown, certain areas sealed, some are under quarantine as a measure to combat the virus. On the other hand, it has been a big loss to the economy, loss of livelihood of the poor and marginalized. In India the lockdown was announced on March 24th for twenty one days and now though in some places the lockdown has been lifted and relaxations given, the number of cases still are increasing. Within few days of the lockdown, the daily wage earners, those working in the informal markets realized that they cannot survive without work and were also not able to get back because of transportation coming to a standstill. The pressure is not only on the economic loses and livelihood challenge of the poor and vulnerable but also on the health of the people.

Every crisis serves as a learning opportunity for civil society organizations and also proves to be a learning curve to deal with such situations in the future. The Alliance of SPARC-NSDF-MM has been working the urban poor in slums and relocation colonies since 1984 and have supported them through various housing, water and sanitation and relocation projects. From the time when the lockdown was announced, SPARC has been communicating with the leaders of the federation and Mahila Milan through phones calls and whatsapp messages. In this way we are in a position to better understand the ground situation, what support do different groups need, how well we can assist them. One of the major challenges faced by these groups was of food insecurity knowing the fact them most of them are daily wage earners, and through the leaders we could get a list from every area of the families that were in most need of food supplies. Amongst the daily wage earners, were also vulnerable groups like widows, single earning member, the aged and lonely. They were given dry ration as well as cooked food in some cases.

One of the relocation colonies, Indian Oil which has more than 50 buildings was sanitized by Mahila Milan and the local community volunteers. While there was news about getting an additional 5kg ration to each ration card holder, the federation witnessed a complete different story where the ration officer did not receive any guidelines stating the above and noticed long queues outside the ration shops.

What the alliance of SPARC-NSDF-MM is doing to support their network of slum families :

• The team at SPARC has been communicating with the federation, Mahila Milan and the community through mobile phones and whatsapp to spread awareness regarding the virus, sharing messages that help prevent the virus.
• Realizing how it has affected the poor man’s livelihood in a span of few weeks, the federation and Mahila Milan started tracking families and supporting them with dry ration and cooked food.
• Interventions from the government are also being tracked to make sure they reach the urban poor and the neediest.
• Online raising funds to buy food grains for slum communities and for families living in relocation colonies is an ongoing process.
• While in Mumbai it was still possible through the mahila Milan and federation leaders to distribute food grains in communities, in cities outside Mumbai it was not possible to do so. Therefore, the leaders in those cities were asked to give bank and contact details of a local shop and they were paid directly through online banking for providing ration to the families in need.
• Movement pass for some leaders were sought that would allow them to move around in the city for distribution.
• For each city and centre list with number of families supported, receipt from the local vendor to be made available for the auditors are being maintained.
• We already have a pitch page/ on our democracy for Credit Cards and UPI
• Individual donations in cash and kind have also been secured and kept track of.
• A total of 4716 families in Mumbai as well as in cities outside Mumbai have been supported so far.

What needs to be done post lockdown:

while the immediate relief to the families during the lock down is in the form of dry rations, but post lock down, there will be a different set of challenges and needs from the community groups that need to be discussed right away in order to be prepared. these needs as discussed with Shekhar could be the following :

1. Educational loans
2. Income generation / livelihood loans
3. Medical loans
4. Crisis loans
5. Individual toilet loans - considering that social distancing cannot be maintained where slum communities have to use a community toilet that serves 1000 of people on a daily basis and the fact that swachh bharat did not meet peoples demand, there needs to be a fresh discussion with the community leaders in smaller towns and cities for the provision of individual toilets. Not only this, the municipality also needs to be roped in to form new strategies and ways of looking at providing individual toilets to one and all.
6. Home upgrading loans - it is uncertain when the lock down will end and even if it is extended we do not know for how long the extension will be for. but as has been the routine process of the sparc and the federation to get requirements from cities on home upgrading loans to improve their roofs especially during the monsoon, walls, floors or to have an additional room, it will still be carried out