Lockdown
Dear all,
Here are few news for those who are not receiving our quarterly bulletin.
India decided to lock-down the country on the 25th of March without clear plan (basically, like European countries). This decision triggered massive population movements among the disadvantaged communities. Indeed, most of the workers in cities are coming from villages, and stay in the slums, hoping to have a better income and life. When the government decided to lock-down and close the factories, the most vulnerable lost their income. Even small, this daily income would provide them with a bit of food and shelter. And so, when the government took that step, thousand people tried to reach train and bus stations to go back to their village, where it would be easier to survive. These movements resulted in a massive queue (the best way to spread any virus...). Since then, people have been locked-down and some slums and neighborhood under strict quarantine. Fortunately, some state government are doing better than other. For Delhi, food distribution is organised for the most vulnerable.
One of the slum we are trying to help receive hence food from the government. The other one is under strict quarantine. It is thus not allowed to go there. In any case, our Indian partner is not allowed to go anywhere. We need to have special permission and it is difficult to get. They get news via phone and WhatsApp. Some bigger NGO manage to get these permissions, and agreed to distribute food in the transit camp where we have few connections.
The good news is that a lot of effort is done by many communities (specifically the Sikh community) to do charity and help the most vulnerable to face this situation. Another good news is that, now, spitting is a crime! For those who have been India, you should have seen that this was unfortunately a common practice...
Our school is closed since mid-March. It is not possible, as you can imagine, to do online class. Hopefully, we will be able to reopen it in June. We decided to maintain the salary of our staff at 80% to help them.
As soon as there is a bit of "relaxation", our partner will go to the slums and check the situation. We hope to be able to distribute mask and soap. I personally refused to distribute gloves, since it will end up, like in Europe, in the streets. We shall try to provide hand sanitizer if available, but I am also thinking about the amount of garbage it will produce (like in Europe => yes, we are really not the best example of civilizations hé).
