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Shelters in Pune see rise in enquires, admissions of children, elderly
Loss of jobs and drastic fall in income forced many to abandon their old parents and in some cases seek shelter for their kids
As the pandemic hit the city, people were not only worried for their health, but also for their well being. Loss of jobs and drastic fall in income forced many to abandon their old parents and in some cases seek shelter for their kids. Thus leading to a rise in the number of enquiries and admissions at shelter homes in the city.
Maher Ashram, which has two centres, at Bhima Koregaon and Wagholi located in the periphery of Pune city is now seeing a large number of requests for admission for old people as well as kids.
Sister Lucy Kurien, founder and director of the shelter home, said, “Since March 2020 we started getting calls seeking admission for old people, men and women and also kids. We even had an enquiry for a kid who lost both his parents to Covid-19 and is still undergoing treatment in the hospital. However, for such orphans the state is responsible and every admission has to be through and child welfare committee and so we cannot directly admit the child,” she said.
“We do keep getting request for such admissions even on a temporary basis as both the parents are in the hospital or have died due to Covid-19 and the child needs a caretaker and a place for quarantine,” she said.
Kurien also said, “We have opened our shelter home for Covid-19 affected kids and senior citizens who need admission on a temporary basis. In some cases, the younger members are infected and they cannot risk keeping old parents at home.”
“From March 2020 to March 2021, we have admitted about 251 women for various reasons including husband’s job loss or suicide. We admitted about 119 children who came for temporary shelter because both the parents are sick or even because of increased tension in the house leading to domestic violence we have even had young girls who are brought in by the police because their parents were forcing them to get married. We have had 53 men who came to seek admission after they were forced to stay on the street. We have also had nine deliveries. We are also getting requests seeking ration kits from single parents who do not have any source of income,” she said.
Priti Vaidya, director of Kinara Old Age Home, also saw an increased number of requests and a rise in homeless people on the streets.
She said, “We are seeing a rise in the number of requests for admissions and we have also got more homeless people on the streets now. Earlier there used to be just 1-2 admissions in months, now we have admitted about 8-10 people in the last three months. These are senior citizens who are aged about 60 years of age who had come here to seek work. These are mostly from the Hindi-speaking belt of the country. They had come here to seek work but during the lockdown, they could not leave as they did not have any money.”
“Before taking them in we also test them for Covid-19 so that other members are safe. Also, we often get enquiries from children who want to admit their senior citizen parents, but we scrutinize every case before we admit them,” she said.
Another old age home, Manuski NGO’s owner Sayli Gayatre said, “We do keep getting a lot of enquiries, however, we have stopped taking in new admissions. In fact, we do not even allow visitors and relatives to come in because this would expose all our members to the infection. So when we get any calls we simply refuse admission.”
