Delhi government on Friday claimed a considerable success of its newly launched mobile application to rescue homeless people during winter.
It said that within a week after Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal launched the app, 97 people had been rescued.
“The total number of complaints recorded through this mobile application and phone calls stand at 85. 97 people have been rescued up until now while eight of them refused to be relocated. Seven homeless were not found and five are being currently attended.,” the government statement said.
A government spokesperson said that 20 rescue teams had also been able to shift 553 homeless to the ‘nearest shelters since 1 December.’
While announcing the launch of this mobile app on 4 December, Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB), had said that users could download the app and can initiate a rescue operation over the phone by taking a picture and posting it on the app.
The DUSIB server automatically detects the location of the person before informing the nearest rescue team to the location.
A survey conducted in 2014 had said there were about 16,000 homeless people in Delhi with most of them predominantly concentrated in the Walled City area, central Delhi, in several railway stations and bus teminals.
DUSIB has so far created 198 night shelters with a capacity to accommodate 16,338 homeless people.