Providing comfort to the flood-hit who are housed in various relief camps across the State is the ‘Freedom’ food from the Central Prison in Thiruvananthapuram that had teased taste buds of the people of the State in its better, drier times.
Everyday morning, a consignment of 500 packets from the chapatti-making unit of the prison moves to the airport, where district officials collect it to be distributed to the flood victims. Each packet is neatly packed, some even ready to be airdropped. Each of the packet, put together by the remand prisoners who work in the unit, contains five chapattis and vegetable curry.
A similar package is readied for the evening too. Along with this, 500 bottles of water too are sent. Ever since the flood, an average of over 65,000 chapathis are being prepared daily at the unit, which is often working overtime to meet the demand. To prepare the vegetable curry, about 50 kg of vegetables is used every day.
“We are working round-the-clock now and the load is heavy for those in the unit. Today, we have to send 2,000 chapattis in a truck to Chengannur,” says A.S. Salim, Assistant Superintendent, who is in-charge of the unit.
There are 35 to 40 prisoners working in a shift at the unit. There are two such shifts, though in times such as these and when short-staffed, prisoners volunteer to work overtime. A similar exercise, though not of this scale, was done during the Chennai floods too, when chapattis were packaged with jam to be airdropped.
The unit also accepts orders from relief organisations that are joining hands with the authorities in reaching out to the victims. Chapattis for such delivery are made as per order and charged ₹20 a packet.
“The jail chapattis come in very handy because the packaging of the food from Central Prison is very compact. And we needn’t worry about quality too,” say the volunteers of Oppamundu Thiruvananthapuram, who were loading a truck that would travel to Chengannur carrying materials donated by the students of Saraswathi Vidyalaya.
For many other voluntary groups too, Central Prison is the one-stop to source dinner for the victims in relief centres. Volunteers also fetch it for themselves, after having worked nonstop for the day.
