Bhopal: At a time when the state capital is in the news for crime against women, destitute and homeless women spending night under open sky braving winter chill should give sleepless night to authorities. Renbaseras, the night shelters for homeless and poor are jam packed, but women in particular are keeping away from there specially after dark for safety reasons.
The renbaseras, being run by municipal corporation, provide poor and underprivileged a roof over their heads. In this biting cold, these night shelters are running to their fullest occupancy. However most of the people coming here are men and women fearing their safety prefer spending night under open sly than coming to these shelters. Most of the employees at these night shelters are men, while authorities have failed to employ women staffers they even did not ensure to do police verification of men employees deployed at the night shelters.
In view of the recent incidents of crime against women in the city, their security should be the prime concern for the administration. In all, 15 renbaseras are being operated in the city and most of them do not have women employees. There are a few night shelters where
women are being deployed, however they do not stay during night hours.
Women contractual workers too are reluctant to spend night at renbaseras and even officials are unwilling to make them stay there until there is an emergency. Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials too maintain making women employees stay during night at these shelters might be risky and so they do not ask assign such duties to them.
At a visit to one of these night shelters, this correspondent found a male visitor staying inside the room allotted to women. On being asked he claimed that he was visiting gis mother who was staying in the room. When the matter was taken to the duty employee, he asked him to leave the room. Additional commissioner VK Chaturvedi when contacted clarified that there is no such rule for police verification of contractual employees. However, he said that since the attention has been drawn towards it, they will consider police verification of the contractual employees also.
