Covid: Children who lost parents during pandemic stare at uncertain future, scramble for aid
According to the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), 3,621 children have been orphaned during the pandemic, and over 26,000 children have lost one parent.
Shatakshi Sinha, 10, is one of them.
The Delhi-based girl lost her father to Covid-19 a month ago.
Her mother Kalpana Sinha said: “Nothing will ever be normal again.”
Kalpana’s 57-year-old husband was an editor at a Hindi publishing house and the sole breadwinner of the family.
After scrambling for an ambulance and a bed for hours, by the time we reached the hospital, we had lost him. I remember my little daughter running after the ambulance, pleading with me to take her along,” Kalpana recalled.
Gaurang (13) and Daksh Gupta (6), who live in Uttam Nagar in Delhi, lost their father, an e-rickshaw driver and the family’s sole earner.
Even before the tragedy, life was so tough that the parents had decided to take the younger child out of school and shift the older one to a government school.
Three siblings — aged 9, 11 and 13 — lost both their parents to Covid-19 in the first week of May.
Their landlord refused to let their tenancy continue unless they paid rent.
Their uncle, a welder, took the three children in.
PTI
