Ahmedabad
Mirror: Ahmedabad: Sunday, 19 April 2015.
Amdavadis
have been knocking on the doors of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation for their
civic-related issues. Till now, citizens at large gathered information relating
to public utilities by filing applications under the Right to Information Act
with the civic body. But rather than making people's task easy, the corporation
has made it tedious. It has removed the RTI cell option from the system, forcing
people to run from pillar to post to access information. Earlier, anybody could
file an RTI plea regarding any civic issue directly to the RTI cell, which
would be directed to the respective department.
However, for
the past two months, the cell option has been removed from the civic centre,
according to activists. An RTI activist on condition of anonymity said,
"AMC is directly connected with people. It collects tax from citizens,
provides facilities and keeps authentic records of people. Many a time people
use RTI to know the status of their records or file complaints. But for the
past couple of months, the RTI cell option has been removed from the
computerised system." It was easy for a lay person who wouldn't know which
specific department to hand over his application, so he/she could directly
approach any civic centre and hand it over to the RTI cell. The cell would then
direct it to the concerned department.
This has
become a cumbersome process now. In this regard, when we talked to Yatindra Nayak,
officer, egovernance, Nayak said, "It cannot be that there is no option. I
am not aware of it. You can talk to system analyst Nitin Adhvaryu who will be
able to shed light on it." Nitin Adhvaryu said, "If you address civic
issues separately, it will be good. It would make our task easier. I don't know
if the option has been removed. You can check with assessor and tax collector
Debashish Banerjee." Banerjee said, "It is an important thing. It
can't be removed. If such is the case, I will definitely take action."
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