Three hundred families, staring at hunger because of Covid-19, got a week’s free ration at a distribution camp at St Xavier’s College on Good Friday.

Each family got three kilos of rice, two kilos each of wheat and potato, a litre of oil and 500gm pulses.

“This sharing of meal signifies caring for our neighbours, who are in distress in this trying time, as it has always been the principle of Xaverians to be ‘men and women for others’,” said Father Dominic Savio, the principal of St Xavier’s College (autonomous) and among those who distributed the ration.

The Good Friday Prayer Service was conducted only by the priests who prayed for the well-being of people in these testing times. The regular attendees prayed from their homes.

The beneficiaries — cobblers, plumbers, rickshaw-pullers among them — came from Mullickbazar, Park Lane and Park Circus. “Police helped us identify those in distress and reach out to them. The night school for underprivileged children run by the institution, too, led us to many families,” said Firdausul Hasan of the St Xavier’s College Calcutta Alumni Association, which had organised Friday morning’s camp.

The volunteers of the association had earmarked spots for each family representative. The priests who distributed the ration wore gloves and masks, as did those who queued up.

The volunteers of the association had visited the homes of distressed families to hand them tokens and asked one person from each family to reach the Park Street campus around 9am.

The distribution continued for close to 90 minutes.

About 400 million people working in the informal economy in India are at risk of falling deeper into poverty because of the novel coronavirus crisis, the International Labour Organization has said in its report.

A majority of migrant labourers working in Calcutta have gone back to the districts or neighbouring states like Bihar and Jharkhand.

The city’s resident population of daily wage earners are flocking distribution camps. But there are still many hungry people.

Earlier in March, the students, teachers, non-teaching staff, alumni and fathers of St Xavier’s College and St Xavier’s School contributed Rs 40 lakh to the chief minister’s relief fund to fight the novel coronavirus outbreak.