Awareness drive to mobilise residents to fight for civic issues

A point in case is the residents of Chitlapakkam are organising an ‘awareness day’ to acquaint the larger public of the locality and neighbouring areas to ensure that their voices are heard by the grievance redressal systems.

Residents have teamed up with various organisations to conduct an awareness day on January 6 at the Chitlapakkam Community Hall. Sunil Jayaram, a resident of Chitlapakkam, said that one of the reasons why civic issues are not resolved speedily is because citizens don’t complain. “If there is a pothole, people will drive around it. If the water supply is interrupted, they opt for private lorries. But as a group of residents who have been addressing civic issues, we have solved several problems using tools such as CM Cell, e-services for town panchayat and RTI, which have been quite effective. Through this program, we wanted to send out a message to the residents that it is easy to register a complaint and see the civic issue resolved,” said the member of Chitlapakkam Rising. 

The Awareness and Rights Day will start off with drawing and essay competitions for the children in the morning, while the evening will be devoted to informing the residents on various grievance redressal tools. 

“The awareness session will teach residents how to use the RTI channel and other process such as CM Cell and e-services portal. We are also focussing on Right to Education (RTE), through which people can ensure that the children of their domestic help are able to access education at private schools. We have experts addressing solid waste management, rainwater harvesting and lake rejuvenation. Resident welfare association members and residents of Chitlapakkam, Hastinapuram and Kilkattalai can attend the session,” said Sunil, adding that this exercise will be repeated at least two more times this year.