An Appeal to Devotees

Throughout peak pilgrimage seasons and during lean pilgrimage seasons, ABASS establishes medical camps, manned by highly qualified professionals, all along the pilgrimage route to render timely medical aid. With its record of charitable humanitarian assistance, ABASS is also one of the prime agencies called upon to provide routine and emergency medical assistance at Pampa and Sabarimala. This role becomes `critical and life saving' should any major or minor emergencies arise. During the 1999 Mandalam - Makara Vilakku season we have had to undertake 35 major casualty evacuation operations inclusive of deaths.

In case of the death of any pilgrim, ABASS takes up the responsibility to ferry the body of the unfortunate to his hometown. This involves the solitary ambulance being out, on a round trip, to the nearby States most of the time. Each round trip takes three to four days. Even this solitary ambulance has now broken down and is `Beyond Economical Repairs'. It cannot move reliably over long distances. The final outcome is that there is no reliable ambulance available at Pampa. We foresee that we may not be able to meet even the daily casualty evacuation demands placed on us to transport emergency cases to well equipped hospitals in nearby towns. We are in immediate need of an ambulance. We request individuals and organisations to contribute in part or whole towards helping us acquire an ambulance.

Being a charitable organisation, every service provided by ABASS is `free of cost'. Even though the organisation has expanded its activities many fold, we continue to operate on a shoe-string budget. Even our desire to extend further facilities to the pilgrims, whose numbers are increasing multifold every year, is inhibited by inadequate cash inflow. In fact, financial constraints are what worries ABASS the most in its day-to-day functioning as we have no regular sources of income except donations received from devotees. We are totally at the benevolence of Ayyappa devotees to build up our financial assets. What comes as a donation from one pilgrim or well wisher goes wholly towards the welfare of rest of the pilgrim community as a whole.

During peak pilgrimage seasons, we provide 'annadanam' to needy pilgrims on a massive scale. This too needs financial resources. We have a special scheme with State Bank of Travancore wherein devotees can make fixed deposits of any amount at any of the SBT branches and nominate `Akhila Bharatha Ayyappa Seva Sangham' to receive the interest on the deposit. This safeguards your deposit while directly assisting the ABASS financially.

Whenever the temple is open, the kitchen of Ayyappa Seva Sangham, at Sannidhanam, is also open. Volunteers step in to cook and serve. Provisions and condiments come from well wishers. The food is free.

Donations to Akhila Bharatha Ayyappa Seva Sangham are exempted from Income Tax under certain sections of the Income Tax Act. This exemption has been granted under Section 80 G of the Income Tax Act 1961 vide order no 302/Tech/146/88 dated 06th May 1991 issued by The Commissioner of Income Tax, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. This notification is kept current through regular renewals.

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