<i>STAR</i> helps cold-hit people

The Daily Star distributes warm clothes and blankets among the poverty stricken people in a village of Kurigram, a northern district hit by bone-chilling cold. Photo: STAR

A blanket in hand, 75-year-old Nurunnahar Begum, who was shambling along with the help of a stick in the bone-chilling cold in a Kurigram village, seemed to have got the most precious thing at that moment.
She has to beg at this age since her husband had died and children stopped looking after her. “How can I buy warm clothes when I cannot eat daily?” she said helplessly.
Nurunnahar was one of some 80 people, mainly elderly, who were given blankets by The Daily Star at two spots of Musallipara in Kaliragra char under Jatrapur union. Around 400 warm clothes were distributed among the people of the area under Sadar upazila.
“Although I had to face tremendous hardship to reach here, now I am happy to feel that I will be able to sleep comfortably from tonight,” said Nurunnahar, who walked around two kilometres to reach the spot wearing a torn saree amid cold on Thursday.
Sexagenarian Hosne Ara of nearby Mandalpara said she has to remain awoke throughout the night as her kantha (a sheet made of clothes) cannot protect her from the severe cold.
Defying thick fog and cold, many children, most of them in shorts and barefooted, gathered at the spots to have warm clothes.
“I do not have a trouser. I requested my father several times to buy me one, but he said he cannot. His entire earnings have been spent on daily commodities,” said Kamrul, a class-three student of Goalpuri Musallipara Ebtedayee Madrasa.
Talking to The Daily Star, Asaduzzaman Miah, member of Jatrapur Union Parishad, urged affluent individuals and organisations to extend assistance to the poor people of the area during winter.