Indian Express 13.10.2010
Civic school students denied their rights, group finds with 2 yrs of RTI efforts
Stuti Shukla Tags : BMC, Mumbaiites for Child Rights, M4CR Posted: Wed Oct 13 2010, 03:59 hrs
Curiousity to know where the huge BMC spending on its schools goes prompted a group of eight Mumbaikars to probe deeper. Two years and 17 Right to Information applications later, the group says it has found that most schemes, facilities and amenities a child is entitled to as a municipal school student, is confined to paper. Every year, approximately Rs 40,000 per student is earmarked by the BMC.
The group on Monday made a presentation to the authorities in the BMC’s education department to show the lacunae they had found.
The idea of Mumbaiites for Child Rights (M4CR) took off three years back when Nitin Wadhwani, a founding member, read about the ever increasing education budget of BMC that runs 1,177 schools with over 4.5 lakh students. “In four years, the education budget jumped Rs 800 crore. We decided to form a group and find out how this huge sum is utilized, what are the provisions covered by the BMC under public education,” said Wadhwani, a businessman.
Apart from Wadhwani, the group comprised activists Aftab Siddiqui, Vidya Vaidya, Lekha Nanjappa, Mona Shukla, James John, Raj Kumar Sharma and Fareed Hussain who did the rounds of 56 municipal schools across six civic wards to compile data. They faced some initially resistance while filing RTIs.
“In the first few months while we were filing applications at the Hindu Colony office of the education department, we did not receive replies within the stipulated time. We filed a total of 17 applications, each pertaining to different sectors within public education, such as the mid-day meal scheme, health provisions, items to be provided to students free etc. When we got all the replies, we compiled them and set out to inspect the ground situation,” said Wadhwani.
The RTI queries found that a student could get free health check-ups every month and was entitled to compensation in case of a major or minor illness or accident. “Even teachers did not know a broken hand could get a student a compensation of Rs 30,000 and broken spectacles could get him Rs 850. The civic body pays an annual premium of Rs 5 crore to United India Insurance for the same but not a rupee has been given to students under this scheme. We also found it was compulsory to have a first aid kit in every school but none of the 56 schools inspected had it,” said Wadhwani.
Following the presentation to additional municipal commissioner A K Singh, education officer A Jadhav and other officials, various lacunae were looked into. “First aid kits were sent to all schools immediately. Not a single parent-teacher meeting has taken place till date in any civic school but after our meeting, a circular was issued to all schools asking them to inform parents about the same. Acting on our observation, officials also started monitoring quality and quantity of khichdi supplied by private contractors,” said Wadhwani.
