Kolkata, Jun 19 (PTI) As part of an outreach project, Calcutta University on Friday provided essential food items to 41 families of a nearby slum.

Members of 41 families of the slum at Giribabu Lane, located near the College Street campus of the university, were given rice, dal, potatoes, oil, masks, soaps, sanitisers while the children were given fruit juice and biscuits, Pro-Vice Chancellor Minakshi Roy said.

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"We had adopted the area two years back to provide academic support to the young and medical help, garments, healthy food to the children and their family members.

"As the lockdown began and in the prevalent situation we could not visit the place for past three months. Following the easing of lockdown restrictions, we decided to visit the place to come to the aid of the families who are daily wage earners.

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"Of the 50 families, 9 have left for their native places but we found the rest are in miserable condition," Roy, who is closely involved with the outreach programme, said.

Each family was given 10 kg rice, 2 kg dal, 5 kg potatoes, 1 litre oil apart from mask, soap, sanitiser, biscuits and juice.

Apart from the Registrar, NSS volunteers and Roy herself, few university students also took part in the initiative in which social distancing norms were followed along with all precautions.

"We wish to follow it up with a similar outreach in July," Roy said.

Archana Das, a slum dweller, said that with her husband who is a paralytic patient, she finds it difficult to feed her two children as the four households she used to work as a domestic help have asked her not to come back for work due to COVID-19 scare.

"They (CU team) were like angels in this hour of distress," she said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)