Bengaluru: Residents of a slum in Bengaluru have raised more than 75,000 rupees to help earthquake victims of Nepal.
To raise the money, some of more than 2,000 residents of Sanjay Gandhi Nagar slum in Bengaluru gave up liquor.
They decided to contribute part of their earnings after their president Nirmala made an emotional appeal for the quake survivors in Nepal.
The 40-year-old president told Matters India they they had experienced other people’s benevolence after some miscreants torched their huts.
They were forced take shelter on the streets with no food and clothes. “Help came pouring in from various quarters and we were given clothes, food, and temporary sheds to live,” Nirmala recalled.
“Having suffered much pain and agony we can well imagine the suffering of the victims in Nepal,” the woman president explained.
She said her people leave early morning to work at garment factories, sites of garbage clearance and construction, push-cart vending, auto driving, domestic work at apartments and other jobs and earn around 200 rupees a day.
When they head back to their makeshift shelters late in the evening, they drop their contributions into large wooden boxes placed in the center of the slum.
Nirmala said many who used to head to local bars after work chose to save their ‘drink expenses’ to save lives.
As they did not know how to reach the money to the victims, the slum residents carried the boxes to the local police station. The police officers advised them to route it to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund through the local Member of the Legislative Assembly.
Most of the slum residents are victims of the 1991 riots that jolted Bengaluru over the Cauvery River water dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.