Respond & Relief to COVID-19 TamilNadu,India

It is well known that once the total lockdown was announced by the government to contain the spread of the Covid19 virus, the suffering of the masses started increasing in leaps and bounds. While on the one hand the fear psychosis that was gripping all, the loss of livelihood for the poor was hitting them even harder.

SPPD’s campaign on generating awareness on the pandemic began in Feburay 2020 had reached almost all villagers belonging to Musiri block of Trichirapalli district of the south Indian state of India. Masks, sanitizers and soaps were distributed to the rural communities as part of protective measures to be followed.

And SPPD had stepped in with the much more essential need of providing immediate relief to the migrant labor families as the threat of hunger loomed large among these stranded   families.

As many as 1000 interstate migrant labor families and a total of 931 were provided with dry food rations enough to sustain for a month. These families belonged to the states of Bihar, Jarkhand, Odisha and West Bengal etc.

This apart the stranded inter district migrant laborers were also provided with dry food rations for enough to last for a month as well.

Together with this, SPPD involved in equally important intervention to mitigate sufferings of the general public. With all neighborhood shops and markets being closed for most of the hours of the day securing daily necessities had become an uphill task for the general public of the region.

Taking this in to consideration Ainthinai Farmers Producer Company that came in to existence with around 1000 women shareholders with the facilitation of SPPD two years earlier had stepped in and started supplying vegetables at nominal prices to households of most of the residential localities in the city of Trichirapalli in 7 mini trucks as mobile selling units. This was carried out in association with the Horticulture department of the government of Tamil Nadu and the city corporation.

This activity went on for nearly five months until the easing down of the lockdown measures in the month of August receiving accolades from the communities across the city of Trichirapalli. Similarly, in the earliest days of lockdown SPPD went a long way in feeding hundreds of homeless people the abandoned elders and also the nomadic community of Narikuravas in also distributed food packets to the hungry in Trichirapalli city and parts of Chennai city. A total of 851 food packets were distributed to the needy at Trichy and Chennai city respectively.  

Thus, SPPD and community organizations facilitated by the same have contributed their bit towards mitigating the sufferings and difficulties of the masses during these hard COVID-19 pandemic times.