CHENNAI: From being one of the first cities in the country to set up shelters for urban homeless in 1944, Chennai seems to have lost its focus on eradicating homelessness, according to a recent report by the Information & Resource Centre for the Deprived Urban Communities.
The city corporation, in the 10th project sanctioning committee for Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NULM) in January, announced its decision to surrender a whopping Rs 7.97 crore allocated for the construction of nine shelters citing ‘non-availability of land’, the report stated.
Even while destitute persons are exposed to the heatwave this summer, newly constructed shelters and those with which NGOs withdrew their contracts or got terminated, remain closed for months. This includes the shelter on Subbarayan Street, CDH Hospital, which was for persons with psycho-social issues, and shelters in Kannapar Thidal, Chamiers Road, Triplicane and Saidapet. TNIE reported in 2022 that the GCC closed four shelters, shifting 30 inmates after contracts with NGOs were terminated.
In addition to this, in Sholinganallur, a building that was intended to be used as a shelter is currently used as the Munsif cum Judicial Magistrate Court and another in Elango Nagar in Tondiarpet zone is currently functioning as a PHC.
“Despite implementing the shelters for urban homeless for over a decade, the GCC has not evolved any summer or monsoon plans to reduce the vulnerabilities of urban homeless during extreme weather conditions,” the report stated.
According to the heatwave action plan that the revenue administration and disaster management department came up with in 2019, homeless individuals were classified under the ‘high high-risk’ groups.
As part of the recommendations for the civic body, the report stated that reasons such as ‘non-availability of land’ or ‘non-availability of NGOs to operationalise shelters’ or ‘lack of strength in the existing shelters’ should not be cited as reasons as there are several measures that could be adopted to address them. “Vacant land mapping, frequent advertisement for NGOs and other institutions to submit an expression of interest, and information campaigns and strengthening outreach measures can be adopted to address the existing challenges,” the report stated.
The city corporation reimburses NGOs running the shelters monthly for staff salaries and quarterly for other maintenance expenses.
When asked if the funds are being released on time, the founder of an NGO that runs one of the shelters in the city, said on condition of anonymity, “After Covid-19, some of the long-time coordinators of the shelter programme (at Ripon) left and since then, there have been backlogs. For us, three quarterly payments are pending and salary disbursement for around seven months is also pending.” If an NGO fails to perform, the blame cannot be solely on the organisation. It also means that the monitoring and mentoring mechanism by the city corporation is also not strong, the NGO said.
Actions pending such as inter-departmental meetings, capacity-building exercises for GCC officials and the shelter organisations and executive committee meetings chaired by GCC commissioner to assess progress of programme should be expedited, the report stated.
When contacted, a corporation official said once the model code of conduct is lifted, tenders would be floated for shelters which are not functional because of terminated contracts or because of withdrawal by NGOs. In the meantime, regular drives are being held to accommodate homeless persons in shelters that are functioning now, officials said.