Aishwarya, a student of class III in a north Indian school filed the RTI, for the removal of a garbage disposal site in front of her school. The letter was forwarded to the local Municipal Corporation and the dumping has stopped.

http://southasia.oneworld.net/fromthegrassroots/india-eight-year-old-uses-rti-for-garbage-removal

India: Eight year old uses RTI for garbage removal

31 March 2010

Aishwarya, a student of class III in a north Indian school filed the
RTI, for the removal of a garbage disposal site in front of her
school. The letter was forwarded to the local Municipal Corporation
and the dumping has stopped.

Lucknow, India: To Aishwarya, eight years old, RTI is an Act that can
work wonders. Especially since it helped her to bring to the notice of
civic authorities, the presence of a garbage disposal site in front of
her school.

Class III student uses RTI to stop garbage disposal near her school/
Photo credit: Mangalore Headlines Not only this, the little one feels
the Act has done the expected rectifying the wrong for her. They
(those who were dumping garbage) have stopped throwing it there, she
shared more than happily. Aishwarya is a student of Class III of a
school in Rajajipuram in Lucknow.

The sight of a dumping ground right across the main gate of her school
was distressing for her each time she passed by.So much so that she
wrote to the chief minister's office requesting her to get the site
removed from the place.

There was a swine flu scare then and our school had asked us to wear
masks, she said. But seeing stray dogs and pigs loitering in the dump
scared me, she said. The girl raised the issue with her parents on a
lot of occasions. But even they could not provide any satisfactory
explanation for the existence of a garbage disposal site close to her
school.

It was then that she wrote to the CM. In my letter, I only requested
her to interfere, said Aishwarya. But her letter did not fetch any
response and we made her file the RTI, said her mother, Urvashi
Sharma.

Aishwarya wrote a three-point application to the public information
officer (PIO) of the chief minister's office seeking an answer to why
the garbage is being dumped in front of her school.

Her handwritten application had questioned the government on who would
own the responsibility if any one of us gets an infection from the
discarded waste.

It is here that the RTIs response giving machinery let down the girl.
Though authorities have shared the information on the site, she is
still to get the answers to her questions.

Six months after she sent the application to the CMs office, it has
been forwarded to the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) for doing
the needful.And, LMC has informed the girl that a modern garbage
disposal site was built at the place by Awas Vikas Parishad.
Authorities have already taken note of the fact that the site is now
close to a school and hence, dumping of garbage on the site has been
stopped.

However, it is the construction at the place which is blocking the
trucks of rubbish removal department to reach the spot and remove the
garbage, said the LMC. Thus, in effect, the problem persists with the
garbage still on the site and consequently, the threat to the health
of school kids is also very much there.

In fact, the parents of the girl still await action on these two
counts viz removal of garbage and answer to their daughters query.

However, the only credit, if any, that goes to RTI is keeping the
faith of a kid in its efficiency. As a beaming Aishwarya said, I am
happy that the right to information has helped me. After her first
brush with the Act, she is already defining it as something that can
make the wrong thing right.

Source : Mangalore Headlines

http://southasia.oneworld.net/fromthegrassroots/india-eight-year-old-uses-rti-for-garbage-removal

--
Urvashi Sharma
F-2376 , Rajajipuram , Lucknow
pin - 226017 , Uttar Pradesh INDIA
contact - 9369613513
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