PM Narendra Modi | Photo Credit: IANS

New Delhi: As the nation faces myriad crises from an economic slowdown due to lockdown and coronavirus outbreak, PM Narendra Modi made an appeal to the nation to donate generously to PM CARES Fund in order to mitigate the current situation.

PM Modi on Saturday said any such donation will strengthen the government’s “disaster management capabilities” as the nation reels from a lockdown necessitated by a public health emergency.

“The PM-CARES Fund accepts micro-donations too. It will strengthen disaster management capacities and encourage research on protecting citizens. Let us leave no stone unturned to make India healthier and more prosperous for our future generations,” Modi tweeted.

COVID-19 pandemic has engulfed the entire world and has posed serious challenges for the health and economic security of millions of people worldwide. The global death toll in the pandemic has reached over 28,000 and 19 people have died in India as of Saturday morning.

The spread of the highly-contagious coronavirus disease has increased in the past week as the total number of confirmed cases stand at 873 as per Ministry of Health and Family Welfare update on Saturday morning.

The PM-CARES Fund accepts micro-donations too. It will strengthen disaster management capacities and encourage research on protecting citizens.



Let us leave no stone unturned to make India healthier and more prosperous for our future generations. pic.twitter.com/BVm7q19R52 — Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 28, 2020

"The Prime Minister’s office has been receiving spontaneous and innumerable requests for making generous donations to support the government in the wake of this emergency. Distress situations, whether natural or otherwise, demand expeditious and collective action for alleviating the suffering of those affected, mitigation/control of damage to infrastructure and capacities etc. Therefore, building capacities for quick emergency response and effective community resilience has to be done in tandem with infrastructure and institutional capacity reconstruction /enhancement,” the government said in a statement.

It is to be noted that the complete lockdown is set to hit poor the most as daily wagers and labourers go out of work. This already triggered a mass-migration of such people from urban centres to their native villages - raising concerns of mass starvation and the exodus carrying the virus to the countryside. The outbreak is currently limited to tier 1 and tier 2 cities in the country.

PM CARES Fund (Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund) has been set up to deal with any kind of emergency like posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to provide relief to the affected.

Prime Minister is the Chairman of this trust and its members include the Defence Minister, Home Minister and Finance Minister. “This fund will enable micro-donations as a result of which a large number of people will be able to contribute with smallest of denominations,” the government statement said.