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Hyderabad: Techies help the poor to beat lockdown blues
In these dismal times of horrendous proportions for the poor and the homeless, technology is playing a god-send role in getting them the much-needed succour, by bringing donors and kirana shops together for extending help speedily.
Hyderabad: In these dismal times of horrendous proportions for the poor and the homeless, technology is playing a god-send role in getting them the much-needed succour, by bringing donors and kirana shops together for extending help speedily.
All this is done without any inconvenience or effort by those in dire need of essentials.
In an instance of how technology can be adopted to serve those stuck due to lockdown and left without food and essentials, as many as 15 daily wage labourers from Jharkhand, who were stranded in Balapur, received rations worth Rs 3,000 through online process within 2 hours of making appeals.
All they had to do is produce a copy of identity at the nearest Kirana merchant who already received the payment from the donors staying several kms away.
The 'Free Ration App' developed by a city-based NGO, Social Data Initiatives Forum (SDIF), has around 8,345 people across India on its donors list. It verifies the claims of the needy people and puts them up on the app for perusal of the donors.
"We have received more than 2,100 applications, of which 1,128 were verified and 680 kits (worth Rs 500) were delivered. We are helping several needy people get at least 1 week of rations directly through their nearest kirana shops," said Khalid Saifullah, who earlier developed Missing Voter App and helped over 1 lakh people get Voter IDs.
The 'Free Ration App' has a database of 10,000 merchants with online payment facilities, across major cities such as Delhi and Mumbai. They have around 3,500 shops from the city, which receive orders from donors and hand over ration kits to the intended beneficiaries.
"We hope that even other NGOs can avail of this app to avoid issues like 'physical contact' in view of spreading of COVID-19. Entire process is transparent; donors would receive online receipts from merchants after payment," informed Azam Khan of SDIF.
All that a beneficiary needs to do is give a missed call on 'support number' of 80999 00900 to get app link in SMS, and they would be asked to Whatsapp their address proof before beginning the verification process.
"With this app, we are also able to avoid any duplication of claims by the beneficiaries who already received a week's ration earlier," added Khalid.
