Donita Jose By

Express News Service

HYDERABAD: The civil society members are in a fix with regard to delivering essentials like food and water to the disadvantaged sections as disturbing reports of brutal crackdown on social workers have emerged.

At least two well-known social workers from the Old City area were beaten up by the police after which their operations have slowed down.

The first case was reported from Shastripuram, where activist Sajjad was thrashed by the police. The photos of injury marks on his body have emerged on the social media, which explain the extent of trauma that the first responders face.

“Our organisation, Access Foundation, runs a tailoring unit to support local women in the community. We were helping them prepare for the lockdown period, and for this, a social worker had gone to their area when he was thrashed by the police. Many such incidents are being reported by the NGOs in the city,” said Maria Tabassum, a member of Access Foundation.

Owing to this, volunteers from Society for Cyberabad Security Council, who were also helping the poor by providing them food, have taken the help of police to hand out food packets to the needy. “The volunteers are helping with fund-raising to feed nearly 300 people in Cyberabad and Rachakonda. The police are distributing these food packets during their patrol,” said Ramanjeet Singh, a volunteer.

Fears are also afloat that the volunteers, if infected by Coronavirus, can become carriers, and some sustainable scientific way of resolving the issue has to be found.

There is also resistance at the GHMC shelter homes on whether new admissions should be allowed. “There are too many homeless in the city who cannot just be admitted at GHMC shelters as they may have Covid-19 infection and they could pass it on to the existing residents, many of whom have TB and other diseases. The GHMC must have function halls and community halls ready for new admissions,” said a social worker.