Reportedly as the city gets ready to tackle the upcoming monsoon, the impoverished and the homeless in Bengaluru have it even worse during the season. Meanwhile these are usually migrants to the city in search of job opportunities and primarily hail from a poor background. Furthermore desperate to improve their quality of life, they tend to take up manual labor and rag-picking jobs, often leaving them unable to afford a house for rent and rendering them homeless.
Presently in order to deal with the situation, the BBMP has taken up an initiative to conduct a survey to identify places that are heavily populated by the homeless, according to nagendra Naik, Assistant Commissioner of BBMP’s Welfare department. Further these include areas around the city bus stand, railway station and KR Market. BBMP has also identified vacant buildings which it owns, in and around the Majestic area, which can be converted into temporary shelters.
Reports added that currently there are six operational shelters in the city, said nagendra Naik, but according to the SC order, cities should have permanent 24/7 working shelters for the homeless under the National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM). Perhaps there should be at least one shelter for every lakh of urban population and so hypothetically Bengaluru needs 120 homeless shelters.
