A fruitful year for Sakshatkaram'

Thiruvananthapuram: ‘Sakshatkaram’, the destitute rehabilitation centre run by Thiruvananthapuram Corporation at Kalladimugham, has a difficult task on hand: to accommodate the destitute including beggars found in the corporation area, identify their relatives if possible and then send them home, if there are takers. In the one year of its existence at its new premise, the centre has sent home nine inmates home while taking care of 31 others. It takes a while to locate the families, which is the toughest job, says charge officer Jaya Kumari. “We admitted a mentally-ill person, Vayyapuri, four years ago years at Kothalam, its earlier location,” she told DC. “He could hardly provide details of his family. Then he could glean from his memory his brother’s phone number out of the blue. We contacted him and then sent Vayyapuri to his home at Tirunelveli.”

The centre seeks the help of the District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) to get in touch with the families and facilitate the transfer of the inmates. Afterwards, DLSA follows up on how they are faring, according to the charge officer. “Of the nine persons we have sent out, eight were to Tamil Nadu,” Ms Jaya Kumari said. “This represents the city’s beggar population. Most of the street dwellers in the city come from other states.” The influx has stopped ever since the bylaw governing the institution was amended in April, 2016. Now it forbids them from giving shelter to non-Malayalis or the ones found outside Corporation limits. Of the 31 inmates, only 13 are Malayalis. The others come from Gujarat, Karnataka and Andhra.

The one-year-old facility has a vegetable garden tended to by inmates. The city mission management unit of National Urban Livelihood Mission is planning to start small livelihood projects for the people here. Various infrastructure projects are also on the cards. The building, constructed using Basic Services for Urban Poor scheme, will have a solar power plant worth Rs 5 lakhs funded by NULM. The 500 metre road leading from Kalladimugham main road to Sakshatkaram is about to be tarred according to Attukal councilor R.C. Beena. The inmates seemed happy. The charge officer says, “We count this year as a successful one because everyone is healthy.”