EK Nayanar fought to uplift poor: Pinarayi

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Former chief minister EK Nayanar’s politics was to support helpless people, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said. He was speaking after inaugurating the newly built headquarters and accommodation facility of the E K Nayanar Charitable Trust near the Medical College Hospital here on Thursday.

The trust is engaged in giving support to patients and relatives coming to various hospitals on the medical college hospital campus.“Nayanar’s life itself was a fight for uplifting the poor. His memories are alive in the hearts of Keralites across the world,” Pinarayi said.

The new building and the facilities in it will be of immense help to people coming to the capital district for treatment purposes, he said. It will be developed into the status of a palliative care centre. The trust used to provide free meals three times a day to patients and their relatives even when it functioned in a rented building.

“Hospitals in Thiruvananthapuram are visited by people from near and far. They include people from other districts and states. Some of them require special attention. The trust’s facilities will be a support to them,” he said.

CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan relaunched the district-level volunteer service of the trust. The volunteers will  visit bedridden people at their homes and offer palliative treatment.Party district secretary and managing trustee Anavoor Nagappan said the volunteer force stopped functioning at the time of the pandemic spread. The trained volunteers will now start service and priority will be given to poor people, he said.The E K Nayanar Charitable Trust started functioning in December 2012. In 2015, the trust launched ambulance and mortuary services. M Vijayakumar is chairman of the trust. The new building was set up at a cost of `10 crore.

Until now, the accommodation facility of the trust was at a building rented out from the city corporation. “Accommodation was provided at low rates and free meals were given to patients and relatives for six years. Thousands of people benefited from it. Most of them were from other districts and states,” Nagappan said.