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Kolkata vagrants get a new lease of life
Kolkata: A unique rehabilitation scheme, which provides vocational training, is giving a new life to thousands of vagrants in West Bengal.These inmates, housed at a vagrant home in Calcutta, are well-trained professionals earning a decent living not just for themselves but also for co-habitants who are medically unfit to work. Trained under a self-help programme started by the state government in 1998, these people make a variety of handicrafts, are expert tailors, and even work as gardeners. The work, though back-breaking, has not only allowed them the much needed financial support, but has also worked wonders for their health. Atanu Banerjee, manager of the home, says engaging these people in concrete meaningful activities works as a therapy thus immensely improving their health."What you are seeing as work, this is not work, we call it occupational therapy. Most of these people are mentally disturbed and when engaged in some meaningful work, even the doctors say has bettered their health, especially mental health," said Banerjee. Most of these vagrants are picked up in appalling conditions from the streets. While some 60 per cent of them are persistent drug users, at least 35 per cent are old people abandoned by their families and driven to the brink of lunacy by the harsh living realities. Though severe psychological disorders are the main cause of concern, sexually transmitted diseases and skin ailments caused due to congested and unhygienic living conditions are equally common. With such variable degrees of instability, the task of bringing consistency in their lives was nothing less than Herculean for both the vagrants and the officials. Jagdish Singh, who has still not fully recovered his mental state, says though it took some time but he was able to learn gardening. "We are doing gardening, I till soil, work hard, I have been working for one year now," he said.The inmates in Calcutta have in the past three years produced goods worth 150,000 rupees. The scheme runs in 10 other vagrant homes in the state. Under the 1983 Bengal Vagrancy Act, homeless people with no source of income found begging on the streets are termed vagrants. The government is liable to provide such people with shelter, food and basic amenities. The new self-help scheme has come as a boon for the destitutes. -ANI |
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