Early Times Report
Jammu, May 24: Continuing its efforts to provide food relief to households in Jammu slums during lockdown to prevent the spread of the Covid–19 pandemic, Vishal Khatri Sabha today distributed fruits among slum dwellers in various parts of Jammu. Speaking on the occasion, Vishal Khatri Sabha J&K President Devender Seth said that Sabha is committed to work towards improving the health and wellbeing of women and children in urban slums.
The Sabha’s primary beneficiaries include children and youth, people in poverty, persons with disabilities and medical needs, the unemployed, and women and girls. As the lockdown had severely restricted the supply of fresh produce across the city and the Covid–19 containment zones, Sabha has initiated food relief efforts to ensure that vulnerable inhabitants received food items rich in nutrients like Vitamin C, which could also help boost their immunity in times of the global pandemic.
Seth maintained that small efforts from everyone can achieve convergence, not only in response to such situations, but by devising common strategies that involve staff from across different verticals. There is a need to strengthen inter-sectoral collaboration between civil society organizations, as well as between civil society and the state. Coordinated responses toward relief efforts should function at appropriate levels of centralization and decentralization and finally, relief efforts require their own independent infrastructure, like dedicated control rooms. It is our hope that this will open up the possibility of bringing relief work within the fold of intervention services, as well as engages in advocacy with local governance to ensure basic rights, such as the right to food security, and their linkages with organizational outcomes on health, nutrition and wellbeing, added Seth. Prominent among those who accompanied Seth include Hari Gandotra, Subash Rekhi, Rama Anand, Ravinder Kapoor beside others. |
