Succor for workers

Beginning 2023 the income of fire temple workers will be supplemented by amounts between Rs 5,000 and 7,500 every quarter, thanks to the Zoroastrian Charity Funds of Hongkong, Canton and Macao (ZCFHCM) and the World Zoroastrian Organisation Trust Funds (WZOTF), Dinshaw Tamboly, WZOTF chairman, informed Parsiana on November 22, 2022. A list of 103 workers has been drawn up, he stated.
The Trust had "a few months earlier informed trustees of ZCFHCM that a list of economically challenged individuals who work as helpers (chasniwallas) at our various atash behrams and agiaries, was collated and requested that they… be considered for financial support,” detailed a note from Tamboly. The "very generous trustees” of ZCFHCM "readily accepted our proposal and have agreed to extend support to them as well,” he stated.
Tamboly listed the other causes that the Hong Kong based body has supported through WZOTF and allied trusts: medical aid to more than 500 individuals annually; support to meet educational expenses for more than 150 students annually; quarterly financial support to 564 individuals who are economically challenged; nearly 150 retired full-time priests or their widows; 77 pallbearers; food grains to 301 Zoroastrian families living in the villages of Gujarat and Maharashtra, and 688 families at Bombay; constructed two buildings at Navsari where poor Zoroastrians reside on very nominal license fees; rehabilitation of poor Zoroastrian farmers living in villages of Gujarat and annually funding the replacement of eight to 10 huts in which they live, into cottages.
ZCFHCM have not only "earned the blessings of thousands of Zoroastrians but also earned the sobriquet of being regarded as ‘Champions of Philanthropy,’” stated Tamboly. F. J.