September 24, 2006

Chingari Trust to provide medical aid to gas victims' children

STAFF REPORTER, THE HINDU, CHENNAI, SEPTEMBER 24, 2006

The Chingari Trust will back livelihood-generation projects for women victims

BHOPAL: The Chingari Trust, a non-government organisation devoted to the cause of Bhopal gas victims, announced on Saturday that it would be setting up a programme for inviting specialist doctors from all over the country to the State capital to identify children of gas or contamination-exposed parents with congenital abnormalities and suggest the best course of their treatment.

Chingari Trust was formed with the donation of $ 125,000, which was received as prize money by Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla, president and secretary of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationary Karmchari Sangh (BGPMSKS).

They were awarded the Goldman Environment Prize in 2004 in recognition of their leadership and ability to charter the course of the struggle for the cause of the gas victims of Bhopal.

The prize of $ 125,000 or Rs. 58 lakhs was given personally to the two leaders.

Though both women were the sole bread earners in their families, they chose to donate the entire prize money to set up the Chingari Trust.

Chingari is a non-profit, non-political registered charitable organisation working on various issues linked with the Union Carbide disaster of 1984.

It was set up in March 2005 with an all-woman Board of Trustees to promote activities that uphold the rights of the people poisoned by Union Carbide and through contamination of ground water.

The Chingari Trust Chairperson, Suroopa Mukherjee, and the two Managing Trustees, Rashida and Champa Devi, announced here on Saturday that besides working for the children of gas-exposed parents, who are suffering from congenital abnormalities, the Trust will also support livelihood generation projects for and by women victims.

The Trust has also instituted an award of Rs. 50, 000 to be given every year to a woman who has successfully fought corporate crime at the grassroots level.

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