Finding it difficult to locate a food or night shelter for poor and migrant labourers during the Covid-19 lockdown, help is now a click away in over 30 cities in the country, with Delhi being the latest addition.
Google India has mapped such facilities with the help of state governments and volunteers in cities and towns over the past couple of weeks and made available on its map. At present, 33 cities and towns are mapped for food and night shelters and more are being added.
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The towns and cities include Mangaluru and Hubballi-Dharwad in Karnataka, Kota and Jaipur in Rajasthan, Agra and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, Rajkot in Gujarat among others. The service is now available in English and Hindi.
Read: Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases, deaths
Anyone can now easily search for their nearest food centre typing ‘food shelter’ on Google Maps app or searching for ‘Food Shelters near me’ on the search box.
Delhi government, with the support of a team of volunteers and researchers, has now mapped all such relief shelters. The government has partnered with Google to display the locations of 1,047 food and night shelters initially on Google Maps, with more being added in the coming day.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said, “as we prepare for an extended lockdown, we are proud to work together with GoogleIndia Maps in ensuring easy accessibility of all our food and night shelters. We are committed to do everything possible to make life easy for those most affected by the lockdown.”
Delhi government has also partnered with Map My India and these locations are available on Map My India’s COVID 19 guide at https://maps.mapmyindia.com/