Cold wave, lack of amenities claim 18 lives in one week

Eighteen people have lost their lives in North Delhi alone in the past one week (January 17-23) as icy winds swept the national Capital and the mercury plummeted to the season’s lowest at 4 degrees Celsius, says data released by the Center for Holistic Development (CHD), which works for the homeless.

According to the data, the national Capital has registered 178 homeless deaths in January alone (till January 23) against a total of 222 last year. The deaths could be attributed to the prevailing weather conditions, lack of food and shelter, inadequate clothing and health problems.

“The city has not witnessed extreme winter like previous years, but the number of fatalities has surely scaled up. Lower night temperatures, lack of proper clothing, food and shelter wreck havoc on the homeless,” said Sunil Kumar Aledia of the Centre for Holistic Development.

The Capital on Friday recorded the season’s lowest maximum temperature at 12.9 degrees Celsius, seven notches below average, while the minimum settled 13 notches below normal at 4 degrees Celsius.

A number of homeless can be seen taking refuge in tattered blankets on roads across the city.  

Death due to extreme cold is not new for the homeless. Anjum, 42, a destitute who takes refuge in a night shelter near the Jama Masjid, said: “Last year, I lost my seven-month-old baby due to extreme cold.”

“Delhi houses around 1,50,000 homeless people, of which only 4,890 manage to get a shelter. This is merely 3.2 per cent of the population. The rest are left to battle the cold weather on roads,” said Aledia.

VK Jain, head of the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB), said: "Till December 2015, we had 196 shelter homes in the city. Today, the Board has added 46 more temporary shelters to house the homeless. We have also appealed to the people of Delhi to donate for the homeless."

"Winter hit the homeless every year, but the authorities are always caught unprepared," said a member of Mother NGO, which works as nodal agency to the Delhi government.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government has also brought in a technology to deal with shelter crisis in the city and launched an app developed by the DUSIB for rescuing the homeless during winters and shifting them to night shelters, but in the absence of proper infrastructure, technology alone cannot reduce the misery of the poor.