Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - HT Navi Mumbai Live
Visually impaired civic staffer ensures essentials for 272 families outside city
MUMBAI: When the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) asked its employees who are persons with disabilities (PWD) to avoid travelling to work during the lockdown, 40-year-old Dilip Zanwar, a BMC control room operator from G-North municipal ward (Dharavi, Dadar and Mahim), wondered how visually impaired people whose sources of income including playing music, singing or selling stationery in Mumbai’s suburban trains, would sustain themselves.
Zanwar, who is visually impaired too, took matters in his own hands.
In the first week of the lockdown itself, he built a network of eight volunteers to create ration kits with essential items that could be distributed.
Some helped collect funds and coordinate with grocers, others made a database of families in need and the number of kits they would require.
Over five distribution drives in
April, which Zanwar was also part of, the team managed to reach 272 families spread out over Vangani, 70km from Mumbai — where he lives as a paying guest —as well as other towns like Shelu and Badlapur in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.
At least 248 of them had visually impaired members.
The volunteers put together 301 kits, which comprised five kilo flour, five kilo rice, one litre oil, two kilo sugar, 250g tea powder, chili powder and 500g washing powder.
Each kit would last a family of five for at least a month.
“Even in normal circumstances, physically challenged persons regularly face hunger as their income is not stable. This is just one of the various challenges they face while travelling on local trains. When the lockdown started, my first thought was how they will fend for themselves,” said Zanwar.
Seeing his chipped in.
A Kandivli-based businessman and a local insurance company began to offer funds and logistical help such as transporting the kits. Kshitij Hirlekar, a businessman, coordinated with local grocers in Mumbai to procure dry ration that went into these kits.
efforts,
others