M-Friends shifts to firewood to cook food for patient caretakers

M-Friends shifts to firewood cooking to ensure uninterrupted meals for hospital caretakers amid LPG scarcity.

Scarcity of commercial LPG gas cylinders has forced social organisation, M-Friends, to shift to firewood to cook food for the caretakers of the patients in Government Wenlock and Lady Goschen hospitals from Sunday, March 15.

Under its ‘Karunya’ initiative, M-Friends has been providing free dinner to the caretakers at Government Wenlock Hospital for the last 300 days and at Lady Goshen Hospital for the last six months. The organisation has been serving chapati with sabji for five days of the week and idlis with tavve on Mondays and Fridays. It has been serving dinner daily to 400 people in Wenlock Hospital and to 100 people in Lady Goschen Hospital. Until recently, it had been using one commercial cylinder every two days to prepare dinner.

M-Friends catering in-charge S.K. Sauhan said the organisation has started cooking food using firewood just to ensure that there is no disruption in serving food to the caregivers. “Instead of chapati and sabji preparation, which consumes more gas, we are preparing veg pulav. If we are able to get cylinders from philanthropists, then we can prepare chapati with sabji,” he said. The food is being prepared in a kitchen located at M.R. Bhat Lane in Jeppu, he added.

Meanwhile, Snehalaya, a charitable organisation based at Manjeshwar in Kerala, has continued to use commercial gas cylinders to prepare mid-day meals for 700 caretakers at the Wenlock Hospital. The organisation’s managing director, Joseph Crasta, said there has not been any disruption in serving food to the caretakers in the hospital, which the organisation has been doing since 2015.

“We have a sufficient stock of cylinders in our kitchen in Manjeshwar. We are a part of the association of orphanages, and we have given our representation to the Kerala government to ensure that we receive an uninterrupted supply of commercial gas cylinders,” Mr. Crasta told The Hindu. Apart from the 700 caretakers at the hospital, food is being provided daily to 450 persons at the home for mentally challenged orphans, which is also run by the organisation at Manjeshwar. Every day, the organisation’s kitchen consumes about four cylinders to prepare food, Mr. Crasta said.