Safe in India Foundation (SII) does three things: (a) Assist injured workers obtain ESIC (Employee State Insurance Corp) healthcare and compensations. (b) Influence systemic changes in ESIC to improve worker services and (c) Influence auto-sector to improve safety in supply chain. In each of these areas, we made substantial progress in past 3 years having assisted 2,400+ injured workers receive better healthcare and compensations of Rs 17 crore+ value, and have influenced several improvements in government rules and policies. All of these activities will have to slow down for a temporary period as factories and most of ESIC is closed.
However, with our passionate team, relationships and outreach in Gurgaon's worker communities, we believe can use our capabilities and skills to assist migrant worker communities that we understand, with their immediate needs; for humanitarian reasons and for keeping them in their current homes/tenements, as happy and healthy as possible, to return to employment when businesses restart and need them quickly. In fact, these people left now in Gurgaon are probably the most vulnerable as they appear to have no other place to go to.
So, we re-purposing and retooling for next few months: a) Assist most vulnerable workers/daily wagers by delivering what they need most, especially food (rations/cooked meals), hygiene kits, transport (as when allowed), etc. We will deliver 250,000+ such units in the most needy mainly in the worker colonies in Aliyar, Basgaon, Bhangrola, Kakrola, Kasan, Khoh, Manesar, Naharpur, Nawada, Dhana, Basai- Kadipur, Gurugram- Sirhaul, Khandsa, Bawal, Binola and Dharuhera. We will do this jointly with Manzil Welfare Society (www.manzil.in), a highly respected non-profit, youth-led learning centre, lead by Ravi Gulati, a fellow IIMA91 alumnus and our Co-Founder, other credible partners and Haryana administration. We have distributed more than 1,000 units in past few days to micro-communities to gain experience and will now scale up.
In the gallery below, Safe In India staff provide essential supplies to worker colonies around Gurugram:
DONATE PORTALS: Indian passport holders who can pay from Rupee accounts/cards, payment details are at www.safeinindia.org/donate
Foreign passport holders and those wishing to pay in foreign currency, please donate to Safe in india’s partner in this initiative, Manzil, also founded by an IIMA 91 alumnus, at https://manzil.funraise.org/ b) Constructively influence COVID19 relief Policies and implementation in Haryana and nationally, by drawing themes/lessons from our above outreach and making recommendations. We have done this in the past and our latest recommendations to ESIC regarding COVID19 were sent on 19Mar20.
c) ESIC systemic Change will slow down for a few weeks but as things settle down and ESIC reopens fully, the current crisis will bring out many challenges and lessons that we will need to work on. We think this is an opportunity for ESIC to improve in many areas as they reboot for post COVID19 world and we will assist that. Click here to download our recommendations to the ESIC
d) Safety Systemic Change will slow down too but we think this is an opportunity to develop safety-related content once business and workers return. We will try communicating these opportunities and methods to workers, auto-sector supply chain, MSME and Labour Ministry at the right time.
e) Social Media Strategy needs to pivot. We have now launched a Hindi facebook page for workers to mainly (a) communicate credible information about COVID19 as relevant to them (b) inform them of national and Haryana regulations as they change and their implications (c) collect information from them (d) once ESIC opens fully, help them use ESIC closer to their places they have gone back to. We have kickstarted our currently low-profile twitter account @safeinindia1 to influence key stakeholders and support our partners eg. Aajeevika Bureau.
We believe that, together with Manzil, we will not only respond well to the current crisis but will come back to our original agenda, stronger than ever! Support us to help the most vulnerable in this time of need.
Wishing you all health and happiness.
Sandeep Sachdeva
Co-Founder & CEO