Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
A month-long campaign in the rural areas to raise awareness about the Right to Education (RTE) Act has revealed high drop-out rates and dilapidated educational infrastructure across several districts.
The activists have now charged the state government for not forming a commission to implement the Central law. They have said nine others states have already formed a commission,and even where consultations are being organised,it remains secretive and unknown.
On Sunday,activists of the Buniyadi Adhikar Andolan Gujarat (BAAG) and Child Rights and You (CRY) presented to journalists videos and documents they had shot and collected from 133 villages in six talukas.
A video shot in the Maldhari village of Fuvara Nesh,Ranavav taluka of Porbandar district,showed two children,Davo and Bachi who said they have been attending classes under a banyan tree for four years and drink water from a leaking industrial pipeline nearby when they feel thirsty. The teacher doesnt beat us because he doesnt come, said Bachi.
In another video,a 10-year-old girl from the Kargo slum in Gandhidham in Kutch said she has been employed to cook food at the local anganwadi for seven months now,adding that she does not go to school.
The activists also presented reports showing Dalit students being asked to sit separately form the others during the mid-day meal scheme. They also presented journalists with the copies of the memoranda they had submitted to the taluka development officers in the areas they had visited. These memorandums contained the statistics of the children who are out of school in that area,complete with their name,age,gender and caste.
The activists said they have identified 4,083 children (1,962 girls and 2,121 boys) who had dropped out of primary school in the places they had visited.
Anuja Shah,assistant manager of CRYs development support wing said local officials told them that there was actually no mechanism in the state to implement the RTE Act.
We are not aware even if consultations are being done,but we know that an agency to implement the Act has not been formed yet. So right now,there is no way civil society can take the government to task on the RTE because it has not been implemented yet, she said.
Under the RTE Act,a state Commission for Protection of Child Rights in each state is mandated to examine,review and recommend measures for the Acts effective implementation in that state. According to the website of the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights,Assam,Bihar,Delhi,Goa,Maharashtra,Sikkim,Karnataka,Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have set-up state commissions.
The formation of the commission comes under the jurisdiction of the Women and Child Development Department,but department head Sunaina Tomar could not be contacted for comments.
R P Gupta,the state secretary for primary education,said he had written to the department about two months ago requesting the commission be set-up as his department required it to implement the RTE Act.
I believe the Women and Child Development Department has taken some action in this regard,but I do not know exactly which stage they have reached or when the commission would be formed, he said.
Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram
