Since many migrant labourers were going hungry during the lockdown, a few youngsters from Delhi formed a WhatsApp group to help them. The aim was that no one should go hungry. What’s incredible is that these youngsters didn’t know each other before they joined hands to help the migrant labourers stuck in Delhi.
Suhail Rahman, who is studying Masters in Sociology at Okhla in Delhi, is one of the team members. He said: “There are many working class people in my locality who suffering during the lockdown. Many labourers were just surviving on water. I wrote about them on social media and a few people helped.”
He added: “We then provided ration to some labourers, but it was not enough. We were in need of more funds. So, when I came to know about the Keto crowdfunding platform, through that I appealed to people to send money to help these daily wage workers.
Where there is will, there is a way. This effort of Suhail bore result and soon people started sending money to Suhail’s account to help the poor and the labourers. But there was also the problem of getting ration delivered to the labourers stranded in other areas due to the lockdown.
It was not easy to arrange for food for such labourers and poor people who were trapped in the lockdown.
“I added some of my fellow college students to a WhatsApp group, who, in turn, added more people. Soon, we had people from different areas in Delhi. They would inform on this group about labourers stranded in their respective localities,” explained Suhail.
Meanwhile, Suhail and his group members approached the local non-government organization (NGO) and stressed on working together for these destitute labourers. All of them are active on the WhatsApp group.
On the behalf of the administration, a list was prepared of ration distribution centres in Delhi. So, the group coordinated with the local administration and the people of different localities were provided one entry pass facility to allow them to supply dry ration to the labourers.
Suhail informed: “At that time, we needed more ration, so we contacted the wholesalers on the phone. They supplied us with more ration and we started preparing ration kits at home. The kit included 5 kg of flour, 2 kg of rice, 2 kg of sugar, one kilo of dal and salt, along with turmeric, coriander, ginger, ghee, chillies and biscuits, which were distributed to the labourers. Around 500 kits of dry ration were distributed to labourers in just Okhla and Yamuna Vihar areas of Delhi.”
Abu Sufiyan, a market consultant and a member of the Delhi Youth Welfare Association, an institution working towards the education of children in Old Delhi, is also a team member. He is running a campaign to provide ration to daily wage labourers during the lockdown and is one of the active members of the WhatsApp group.
He said: “We had two challenges in providing ration to the labourers. First, we had a paucity of funds, and secondly, to facilitate the ration delivery to the labourers in every locality of Delhi. To meet the shortage of funds, we appealed to the people to help us financially through social media where we got a great support from the people. Due to our wider WhatsApp group network, we’ve got volunteers in almost all areas of Delhi, which made us get information about the distressed labourers and the poor.
Their WhatsApp group has, so far, 160 volunteers and 20 local NGO members and they all have been continuously helping out workers during the lockdown.
Sufiyan said: “In order to provide ration to the labourers, we contacted the grocers in different areas through our volunteers on the phone and prepared ration kits from them. We also paid them through Google Pay and Paytm. After that, with the help of the police and through the volunteers living in the locality, we transported ration to the poor and the labourers.”
He added: “There were many areas where we issued slips to the labourers. By showing the slip, they could take ration from a nearby grocery store and our volunteer paid cash to the shopkeeper. So, we also covered old Delhi and distributed ration to more than 1.20 lakh people all over Delhi.”
Despite such help, there were a large number of labourers who did not even have the money to recharge their phones, so it was not possible for them to arrange for milk for their children and the money to buy medicines. They desperately needed money.
Sufiyan said: “Earlier we were only delivering ration, but then the labourers were also facing cash crunch. We had begun getting many phone calls. Then, out of what we got, we started giving Rs 1,000 each to the needy labourers. Many localities had become hotspots so we asked the labourers for their account numbers and sent them money.”
This sequence of helping the poor was not confined to Delhi by the second lockdown. Many calls came from other states too. But with no volunteers, it was not possible for them to provide ration to the labourers there.
“We also had the numbers of the labourers from Amroha, Aligarh, Bhopal, Nagada, but we did not have any volunteers there, yet we tried to find a person with an entry pass, so we made them online payments and provided ration to the labourers there,” said Sufiyan.
Their endeavor of not letting anyone sleep on an empty stomach during the lockdown, is still continuing. Both Sufiyan and Suhail Rahman have so far received more than Rs 35 lakh of financial assistance to help the labourers which they are trying to utilize with full transparency. Nevertheless, they need more funds and are appealing to the people to help them continuously.
“We still have a demand of 1,000 kits every day, calls are coming from different places for help. We are all trying to ensure that nobody faces any difficulty in terms of food at least during the lockdown,” said Sufiyan.
This caravan of help to labourers is continuing. “When the lockdown is over, I shall meet all the people who have worked together with us. I did not know them, I had never even seen them, hopefully all of us will be meeting soon,” said Sufiyan.
