HYDERABAD: IN a city with restaurants, cafés and food-delivery apps abound, food should be the last worry on a Hyderabadi’s mind. Ironically however, hundreds of families in Hyderabad go to bed every day on an empty stomach. In an attempt to bridge this ever-widening gap between food wastage and the hungry, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has decided to partner with the NGO Apple Home for Orphan Kids, to install community fridges at vantage points across the Serilingampally zone under the concept ‘Feed the Need’.

For the uninitiated, community fridges are refrigerators located in public places where residents can donate food for the benefit of the poor and needy.Apple Home for Orphan Kids, an NGO that works for orphan children in Hyderabad, had reportedly approached the GHMC a few days ago in order to pitch the idea of installing such fridges here in the city.

According to GHMC officials, ‘Feed the Need’ aims to come to the aid of the city’s hungry, whether it be beggars or the homeless.Any kind of food or even leftovers from households, functions, restaurants and hotels could be left in these refrigerators to be preserved, so that the same could be collected and consumed by those in need.

The ‘Feed the Need’ refrigerators will be of 530-litre capacity, and installed at 10 locations in Madhapur, Banjara Hills, Jubilee Hills, Erragadda, Red Hills, Chanda Nagar, and Gachibowli. Persons With Disability (PWD), preferably, will be hired for the cleaning and maintenance works of the refrigerators.

A small temporary shed will also be built to protect the refrigerator at these places. The GHMC will be providing power connection to the refrigerators which will be its only investment in the project. At a meeting convened here on Thursday, the GHMC Standing Committee approved the proposal towards the same. On behalf of the GHMC, the zonal commissioner of Serilingampally will sign an MoU with the NGO to kickstart the programme.