The coronavirus has impacted not only the people who are suffering from it but also those who have been left jobless or unemployed due to the self-quarantine precautionary measures taken by the government. In order to bring relief to the daily wage workers, FWICE had announced a week-long campaign of distribution of groceries and other essentials to daily-wage workers from March 22, 2002. Unfortunately, they had been unable to fulfil their promise due to the lockdown.
Now their initiative has taken a positive turn as the organisation has begun a door-to-door supply of food kits to their employees on Thursday. FWICE president BN Tiwari informed a leading daily, "We couldn't wait any longer because the situation is getting bleaker with every passing day. Hence, we decided to distribute the ration kits among the junior artistes by going door-to-door." With several cine bodies — including the Cine Dancers' Association, and Cine Costume, Make-up Artist & Hairdressers' Association — coming under its umbrella, the FWICE handles almost two lakh daily wagers. In their first step, they covered the Andheri-Jogeshwari belt in Mumbai and distributed 500 kits, each containing about 15 days' food for a family, including rice, dal, atta and spices."
However, dropping door to door was not feasible for every daily wage earner so Tiwari decided to inform the worker to collect the groceries from the nearest office. "We dropped the groceries at the offices of the different associations in the morning. We then allotted different time slots to the workers so that they could come and collect it from their respective associations."
@fwice_mum #FWICEFightsCorona#IndiaFightsCorona#DailyWageWorkers pic.twitter.com/0Umf6MFMLZ
— Federation of Western India Cine Employees (@fwice_mum) April 2, 2020
On Thursday, Shah Rukh Khan, besides donating to the PM-CARES Fund, announced a series of initiatives to combat the crisis. Among them was the superstar-backed Meer Foundation that vowed to provide essentials to 2,500 daily wagers in Delhi. Tiwari said he has also shot off a letter to Shah Rukh, to highlight the plight of those based in Mumbai. "We are grateful to Rohit Shetty, Ajay Devgn and Salman Khan for standing by us. We have sent a letter to Shah Rukh Khan's manager and Hrithik Roshan, seeking financial help."
.jpg)