Helping hand: Good Samaritans ensure dignity to Covid victims in death

CUTTACK./SAMBALPUR: At A time when families and relatives of Covid-19 victims are dreading to touch their last remains, social workers and volunteers have come forward to ensure that they are given a dignified cremation or burial.

In Cuttack, 16 volunteers of Sabitri Jana Seva Health Helpline have taken the responsibility of such funerals at the Satichaura crematorium. Ever since the second wave hit, the volunteers haven’t taken a break. Most of them remain in the crematorium round the clock to cremate the victims whose bodies are being brought from different Covid hospitals.

“Relatives of the victim do not enter the crematorium fearing the infection but we assure them that their family member gets a dignified farewell”, said founder secretary of the organisation Bibhuti Kumar Ray, a para legal volunteer of Odisha State Legal Service Authority. From arranging firewood to getting the paperwork done and lighting the pyre, the members do it all.

During the first wave, the Cuttack Municipal Corporation had assigned the cremations job to the organisation which conducted funerals of 1,200 bodies as per Covid protocols at Khannagar, Kaliaboda and Satichaura crematoriums in the city from August 18 to December 31. This time, though, Covid bodies are being cremated only at Satichaura. This year, while 70 Covid infected bodies were cremated from January 1 to March 30, funerals of a whopping 204 such bodies have been done from April 1 to April 29.

Good Samaritans ensure dignity to Covid victims in death 

The volunteers do not back out from the job even if they are forced to do it without PPE kits many times. “Government provides Rs 4,800 towards cremation of Covid positive bodies. A majority of that money goes into buying firewood and other religious paraphernalia required in a funeral. There is no money left to buy PPE kits”, said Ray, who belongs to a slum at Sartol near Nuabazar. He had formed the organisation in 2006. He had been cremating unclaimed bodies in Cuttack since 2013 with the help of Commissionerate Police.

“It is God’s grace that none of us have been infected so far. Despite the work that we do, the government does not consider us Covid warriors”, he rued. Hundreds of miles away in Bargarh, volunteers of ‘Sankalpa Parivar’ have been doing this noble task since the first wave last year. In the last one year, they have performed funerals of 150 Covid victims of which 46 bodies have been cremated in April alone. Of the 70 members of the social organisation, 12 are actively involved in cremating bodies of Covid victims.

The organisation had started working towards helping people from vulnerable backgrounds when the country went under the lockdown in March last year. “We were pained to see the families of Covid victims struggle to cremate the bodies as no one came forward to help them. Not even their own relatives. Since the situation demanded, we decided to take up cremation of Covid infected bodies”, said founder Bikash Agarwal. 

In May last year, the volunteers first cremated the mortal remains of a Covid victim and since then, the requests for giving a dignified funeral to the victims have not stopped. Not just Bargarh, they get requests for cremating the Covid deceased from nearby Attabira and Godbhaga. The local police, too, rely on them for the purpose.

The organisation spends Rs 4,000 on cremation of a Covid victim and each of its members contributes from their savings for the purpose. “The only problem we face is of firewood. At one time, we had to request people on social media to help us in arranging firewood. If the district administration could install an electric crematorium in Bargarh, it can make the job easier”, said Agarwal.