BENGALURU: The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has informed the Karnataka High Court that persons living in temporary sheds on streets are unwilling to move to shelter homes due to the fear of losing their accommodation and as they believe that the temporary shelters are safer than shelter homes.This is one of the aspects revealed in a report placed before a division bench of Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice B V Nagarathna by the BBMP recently with regard to its efforts to identify people without shelters and migrants in the city.
According to the report, for the purpose of ensuring food security to all the vulnerable sections, the BBMP has broadly classified people into three categories -- vulnerable sections without shelter or food, vulnerable sections on construction sites and projects and vulnerable sections having accommodation but no food or means to buy food.
The BBMP stated that it identified many people without shelters, but that the vast majority of them refused to be relocated to the relief centres. “Some expressed that they felt safe from COVID-19 threat in their current locations rather than being housed in a community centre,” the BBMP said.
It said such reluctant people were not picked up and were being provided food as per its policy to distribute food or food kits to those without ration cards.While saying that this report will be considered on April 24, the bench orally asked the state and the BBMP to find out whether the city police have some information about migrants.