Those who made contributions to the CMDRF (which has 110.55 crores as of August 13) include elderly people, widows, students, and daily laborers.
Contributions like these have been flooding into the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund (CMDRF) from all over the state in the wake of the July 30 Wayanad landslide that tore through the hills of the north Kerala district, killing nearly 231 people and washing away homes and property. A 76-year-old decided her long-pending surgery could wait, a fish vendor gave up his day’s savings, and two sisters decided it was time to break their piggy bank. There remain over 130 landslide victims unaccounted for.
Those who made contributions to the CMDRF (which has 110.55 crore as of August 13) include elderly people, widows, students, and daily laborers. They placed their daily necessities and lifestyles on wait and used their little funds after being moved by the tragedy’s immensity and answering the state government’s appeal for donations for relief efforts.
Sivanandana, a student in Class 7, and her sister Shivanya, a student in Class 1, presented their parents with the Rs 3,050 they had amassed over the previous year at Chiyyaram in Thrissur. “Most of the coins were ones I had given them, worth Rs 1, Rs 2, and Rs 5. My younger daughter wanted a bicycle, while my older daughter wanted to get a new TV.
What they witnessed in Wayanad touched them, and Sivanandana expressed her desire to help. Shivanya concurred too. “They both decided that the TV and cycle could be purchased at a later time,” their jeweler father C S Saneesh explains. The family resides in the village in a 600-square-foot home.
The CMDRF received Rs 53,000 from Edathil Sreedharan, 64, a fish vendor at Panoor in Kannur, as part of his daily earnings. “I usually watch the news on TV while I eat. It’s a routine behavior. I just can’t eat anything, though, since after seeing the news on the Wayanad disaster, the food won’t go down my throat. The least that I can do is forfeit a day’s worth of profits. In Wayanad, some have lost everything,” he claims.
The 76-year-old Savithri L. of Anad village, Thiruvananthapuram, gave Rs 25,000, money she had saved for surgery to repair her bow legs. I had been able to save aside a small amount from my labor pension in agriculture. My legs were starting to hurt so much that I believed I would get the operation at last. However, after viewing images and videos from Wayanad, I believed their suffering to be far worse than mine. I get to eat three times a day, at least. “My surgery is not urgent,” she states. Muhammad Fidel’s parents, a Class 2 boy with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, had to make a tough choice. They choose to give the CMDRF their son’s Rs 16,000 in piggy bank money. “Our goal was to purchase a vehicle that would fit his wheelchair. He consented to give up his piggy bank, which held the sum of his disability benefit (Rs 1,600) each month. We’ll have to wait for the automobile. His mother Thasni states, “He decided to assist the people of Wayanad.” Noufal Shah, her spouse, is employed in the Gulf.
The 22-member Haritha Karma Sena, a women’s self-help organization that gathers non-biodegradable rubbish from homes, gave Rs 40,000 to the CM’s Fund at the Chembilode panchayat in Kannur. The majority of these women, who sell rubbish for recycling, are from low-income households.
We had set aside 10% of our money for emergency scenarios, such as the care of a Sena member or her family, according to Haritha Karma Sena coordinator D Jisha. We decided to give that money to the Wayanad people. They are the ones who are most deserving of it.
The CM Relief Fund has previously benefited from similar donations made by citizens of Kerala as well as by expats living in the Gulf and other locations during emergencies and catastrophes, such as floods. Large numbers of individuals from all throughout the state and abroad had contributed during the floods in Kerala in 2018 and 2019. During the floods and the pandemic, the CM Relief Fund received donations of Rs 4,970 crore and Rs 1,129 crore, respectively.
