Business
The healing touch
It has already disbursed two-and-a-half crore rupees in the less than 12 months it has been functional. The Taj Public Service Welfare Trust was set up shortly after the terror attacks in Bombay on November 26, 2008 to provide immediate relief and hope to individuals and families affected by the sudden tragedy in their lives — the general public, police, firemen, security forces, employees of the Taj and other establishments.
The Taj Mahal Palace and Tower: healing wounds
"Initiated by Indian Hotels Company chairman Ratan Tata, a team comprising members of the Taj management and 20 students from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences traced 360 families who had been affected by the attacks (at Victoria Terminus, Metro junction, Café Leopold, etc). While some addresses were hard to locate in the serpentine bylanes of slums, others had to be traced back to the victims’ native places,” reports The Times of India, November 13, 2009. Apart from financial assistance, the Trust provides medical help, vocational training, educational grants and trauma counseling. The ones who were assessed to be more needy and those from backward sections were particularly focused on. The Sir Dorab Tata Trust, the Sir Ratan Tata Trust and the Indian Hotels Company made the initial major contributions to the Welfare Trust.
Today more than 100 families get help of up to Rs 7,500 to Rs 10,000 a month. "We ensure that the money reaches the right person. In many cases, we opened bank accounts and trained them in operating them,” said H. N. Shrinivas, senior vice president, human resources, Indian Hotels Company, the paper adds. The educational expenses of 30 children of the victims, a micro-financing scheme to buy rickshaws, etc as required, and the repaying of loan installments are all taken care of.
The Trust has also taken over the management of the government-run Industrial Training Institute in Lonavla to provide courses in computers, baking and housekeeping to make the families of the victims independent. "We also make sure that they are absorbed by the Taj and other Tata companies,” Shrinivas added.
The ambit of the Trust also covers natural calamities and other events that inflict damage to life and property. With a corpus of nine crore rupees, which came from the Tata Trusts, other Tata companies and Taj employees who contributed one day’s salary, Rs 3.4 crore will be disbursed by January next year, adds The Times of India.
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