Pronam – project for the elderly

I was at the premier of Shukno Lanka yesterday evening and watched the film with Mamata Shankar, Usha Uthup, Agnimitra Paul, the team of Shukno Lanka and others. Prior to this engagement I had to sort out some of the pending issues relating to Education for All project as well as project Pronam. In fact we had a long and very fruitful meeting at the police headquarters Lal Bazar on Tuesday evening at the CP’s room. Besides the Commissoner of Police (CP) Gautam Mohan Chakrabarty, Banibrata Basu SP CP2, Neeraj Singh Jt CP, Arindam, Agnimitra and Shukla Tarafdar, administrator, office of the Pronam Project, were there.

We have revived the Pronam project and the Commissioner of Police has been kind enough to take instant action to sort out the pending issues by making phone calls and instructing his departments. We also finalised the dates for meetings with other people and institutions to take forward various other activities of Pronam. I was very glad to see the CP’s personal interest for this project. The fact of the matter is that Project Pronam – a joint initative of Kolkata Police and our organisation – The Bengal – has achieved its targets because of the commitment of the Kolkata Police and the CP’s personal efforts only.

All the 48 police stations has a team of policemen with special help line numbers dedicated for this Project which forms the infrastructure backbone. One major decision that we took at the meeting was that from now on the membership of Pronam would be available free of cost to all the senior citizens within the jurisdiction of Kolkata Police. So far it was for only those senior citizens who stayed alone or with their spouses. We already have more than 1700 members.

I recall the day when the ID-Cards for the first 100 members of Pronam were distributed in the presence of R K Pachnanda, IPS, Soumitra Chatterjee and others (pictures).

Now, with Pronam opened to all the elderly in Kolkata, let’s see how things work out. Thank you Kolkata Police.

To night I leave for Thailand.

ess bee