CHENNAI: The shelter for homeless women at Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital has been functioning without a coordinator for the last three months. A woman security staff has now taken up the role of coordinator, keeping logs of residents, collecting identity proof and taking care of their needs.
The shelter is used by an average of 20 visitors a week, mostly by economically backward women and children from all over the state who undergo chemotherapy and dialysis at RGGGH and have nowhere to stay. The shelter is now run by an NGO, ‘Arogya,’ for the city corporation.
When TNIE visited the shelter, the woman staff said they have been asked to look for other jobs and that the facility is set to be closed down. For three months now, the security staff, a single woman whose 21-year-old daughter herself is a dialysis patient at RGGGH, has been running the show along with a housekeeping staff, the only two in the facility.
“We have reduced the intake of residents after the NGO informed us that it is going to be temporarily shut. But we still take women who come for emergencies. I do what I can because my daughter herself is a patient,” the woman said.
The mother of a 12-year-old leukemia patient said the shelter has been of immense help since they come from Mayiladuthurai. Her husband died a few years ago and the woman comes to the hospital two to three times a week for the treatment.
The security staff, who usually received a monthly salary of Rs 7,000, said she hasn’t received her pay in the last three months. “Our main concern is the shelter shutting down as my daughter and I will have nowhere else to go. Where will the sick and helpless go,” she said.
The role of coordinators is to keep an eye on attenders who might be sleeping on the premises at night and identify such individuals in coordination with nurses and deans, carry out documentation, offer psychosocial support to attenders of patients, especially in cases of burn victims or those who attempted to kill themselves, and also arrange dinner for them from Amma Unavagams.
“There is a lapse in monitoring. There should be a robust monitoring mechanism. The Greater Chennai Corporation should prioritise shelters and it should be considered a special project,” said Vanessa Peter of Information and Resource Centre for Deprived Urban Communities’.
Corporation officials said it has been brought to their attention that the shelter has been functioning without a coordinator for the last three months.
“We have asked the NGO to improve their services. If not, we will terminate their contract. This is an essential shelter so it will not be closed down,” a senior corporation official said.