New Delhi: Innovation is the order of the day and the protesting farmers against the new agri laws are becoming innovative by the day. A group of sportspersons and farmers have started a laundry service using multiple washing machines at Delhi’s Singhu border. The aim is to help protesters there avoid trips back home to bring back clean clothes. Twelve sportspersons from Punjab and Haryana and four farmers from Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) have started the laundry service.
The washing machines run 8-10 hours every day, they said. They added that farmers’ phone numbers and details of their camping location are taken. The washed clothes are delivered to them daily.
Jagjit Singh hails from Ludhiana and is one of the four BKU farmers. He said he came up with the idea of offering the laundry service. This happened after he made multiple rounds between Singhu and his city just to get fresh sets of clothes.
So when he went back to Ludhiana two days back, he and three of his friends decided to implement the idea. They not only got sets of clean clothes, but also bought two washing machines with them.
“Since the last two days, all the farmers here have been coming and depositing their dirty clothes, which we wash and dry,” Jagjit said.
They use the water from the tankers that the farmers have brought along with them. The washing powder is being donated by various people. The machines have been running 10 hours a day since Sunday.
A similar service is being provided by a group of sportspersons since November 28. The group has set up two washing machines in the open space around the Kessel Grand Mall in Kundli. They have been washing clothes of farmers from 8.00am to 7.00pm.
“There are about 12 of us and we take turns to do the washing. After that we clean up the space here. We take the farmers’ phone numbers and the details of their camping location. Then we deliver the washed clothes,” Nishant Singh, a Kabaddi player from Punjab said.
Nishant asserted that they started this service simply to make things easier for their farmer brothers. “When we saw that farmers had to travel back to their homes repeatedly just to get clean clothes, we decided to get the entire cleaning system here. We might be from the field of sports, but all of us come from families of farmers. We know the difficulties that the community has been facing. Farming is their bread and butter. These laws are threatening that and we want to help them in their fight in any way we can,” Nishant added.
