SRIKAKULAM: Reacting to a news report on the plight of an elderly couple titled ‘No income, but they have to raise grandkids’ published in these columns on August 31, Collector J Nivas on Tuesday requested the Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS), Srikakulam to support the children. With the intervention of the IRCS, the children will now be shifted to the society-run orphanage at Srikakulam.
TNIE had published an article on how the elderly couple — K Gavarayya and Rajulamma — were finding it difficult to raise their grandchildren after their daughter died amid the Covid-19 outbreak, which affected their livelihood. They used to wash clothes for a living, but stopped getting work due to the spread of coronavirus. The children’s father died about a year ago.
Following the intervention of Nivas, IRCS representatives on Tuesday went to Tekkali to meet the children — both aged around 15 years — and their grandparents. They counselled them, and the children agreed to be shifted to an orphanage.
IRCS Srikakulam branch chairman P Jagan Mohan Rao told TNIE representatives of the Society motivated the children to move to the Santa Anurag Nilayam orphanage. “We even motivated the elderly couple to admit the children there for a better future. We will shift the children in a week,” he added. As one of them is above the age of 15, we will provide skill development training to him, he added.