Mayor Atiqul to reach out to destitute with foods

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DHAKA, March 26, 2020 (BSS) – Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) mayor-elect Atiqul Islam is set to reach out to the doorsteps of poor, destitute and low-wage earners with food as the government has enforced ‘stay at home’ rules of the citizens all over the country in the wake of deadly coronavirus.

The personal humanitarian response of the mayor came at a time when the question rumbled through the social media how the poor people will put their body and soul together when they cannot make it to the street to earn a living.

“We are already equipped with food enough to be disbursed among 3000 people,” Atiqul Islam told BSS.

He said an organization named ‘BD Clean’ will aid the DNCC in the initiative. Each family will be provided with 5 kilogram rice, 1 kg pulse, 1 liter oil, 1 kg potato, and 1 piece of soap, he said.

The mayor called upon his acquaintances and the affluent people to get involved in this humanitarian action, the scope of which will be expanded.

The distribution will be overseen by ‘BD Clean’, he added. “As observed at the time of relief disbursement, a crowd pops out of nowhere with each person competing wildly to get the food before the other,” Farid Uddin, founder and chief coordinator of BD Clean, told BSS.

Everyone wants to make sure that he or she receives his or her fair share before it is all doled out, he added.

“But, our activities will not even leave the faintest possibility of any mess. There will be three of our activists waiting at a particular spot before our foods reach there,” he said.

He said they will distribute the food among the list of families. It means that the next-door neighbor will not know about it, he added. At the same time, he said, transport workers and employees will be updated on how they can save themselves from the pandemic caused by COVID 19.

Since December 2019, Coronavirus, having unleashed itself in the Chinese city of Wuhan, turned into a global pandemic, prompting lockdown in cities across the world.

In Bangladesh, marked with a few death cases from coronavirus, the government shut down all offices from March 26 to April 4 and suspended operations of all public transports, trains, vessels and domestic flights so that people stay at home to maintain social distancing to limit the spread of the deadly virus that already killed over 20,000 people across the globe.