No end to problems at night shelters

NEW DELHI: Gulshan trembles as she wraps a wafer-thin blanket around herself and her children—aged 4 and 6. The woman, in her 20s, and her young children have sought refuge from Delhi's relentless winter at a night shelter in Meena Bazaar near Jama Masjid.

- Varun Bhandari

But their stay there is not without a raft of troubles.

"This cot is on rent—we pay ₹30 per day for it. All three of us huddle on this," she said.

There are few beds in the barebones shelter and many are forced to make do with worn-out mattresses placed on the floor.

Haseena, 40, another inmate, said, "The mattresses here are completely worn out, and there is no bedsheet or pillow."

This past week, Delhi has recorded a sharp drop in temperature, logging a minimum below 5°C on four of the past seven days. The bitter cold has driven hundreds of the city's homeless to shelter homes scattered across the Capital.

But many of these facilities, managed by the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB), remain rudimentary, with inmates struggling to stay warm and safe.

DUSIB's winter action plan for 2024-25 states that Delhi has 197 operational night shelters with a combined capacity of 7,092 people. These shelters are supposed to provide basic amenities, including mattresses, blankets, drinking water, and functional toilets.

But inmates said that more often than not, these facilities operate without electricity or functional toilets, while mattresses, bedsheets and blankets are flimsy and unwashed.

Sunil Kumar, executive director at the non-profit Centre for Holistic Development, said the quality of shelter homes in the city is vastly inadequate.

"There is a lack of blankets, mattresses, lockers and security arrangements in almost all the night shelters in the city. There is no standard operating procedure on the washing or cleaning of the bedsheets, mattresses and blankets," he said.

HT reached out to DUSIB, and a senior official, on condition of anonymity, said all necessary precautions for cleaning and maintenance are in place, but all feedback will be looked into.

Lack of toilets and drinking water