Kerala's initiative to raise Rs 10cr through E-waste disposal is one of a kind

The Kerala government plans to raise Rs 10 crore by disposing of around one crore kg of e-waste lying in state-run schools in the state and use the money to buy new computers for schools under its IT@School Project.

The E-waste includes old monitors, mouses, keyboards and UPS, among other things that have been lying unused in 10,000 state-run schools in the state.

K Anvar Sadath, Executive Director of the IT@School project, told IANS that arrangements are being made to collect the e-waste and ship it to Clean Kerala Company's Hyderabad facility, where it will be scientifically processed.

For every kilogram of e-waste, the state will get Rs 10 and the proceeds of this will be used to buy new computers which would be apportioned among all the 10,000 schools, Sadath said, adding,

"This e-waste has been accumulating since 2000 and an expert committee will verify all the equipment that will be declared as e-waste. IT@School has devised an online system to capture the quantity of e-waste in each school and to collect it in batches. This exercise would be completed by July 15. Later, we will conduct hardware clinics in selected regions to repair and upgrade machines which are repairable."

The IT@School project was set up to augment IT education in schools. An initiative of the Department of General Education, Government of Kerala, the project, launched in 2001, intends to remodel conventional teaching methodologies in classrooms through the use of IT.

The project aims to target more than 12,000 schools in the state besides schools in Mahé, Lakshadweep, and the Middle East that follow the state syllabus.

Over five million students and 200,000 teachers are estimated to be a part of this project, which has a network of 160 "master trainers" and 5,600 school IT coordinators, who are school teachers themselves.

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