Hardly any change after Right to Information Act
Monday, 3 May 2010
Zubair Hussein
The Right to Information (RTI) Act has been in existence for over a year. But ironically, this Act which is full of significance in creating conditions for good governance, accountability of the government and promoting people’s basic rights to know about government’s decisions, actions or lack of actions and policies, remain hardly known to people for whose benefit it was introduced in the first place.
Legislations centred on RTI are in full force in many countries of the world specially in the ones which are developed and ruled democratically. The same were found to be powerful tools in asserting citizens’ rights to compel government bureaucracies to divulge information to people about matters of interest or significance to them. Bangladesh has long suffered from not having such an Act in place that only aided governmental institutions here plus the judiciary and the parliament, to cling to their culture of secrecy denying people the rights to know adequately about activities often with great consequences for them.
Typically, a concerned and aggrieved individual or groups of individuals in Bangladesh did not have any way of demanding information from governmental and other institutions to part with information considered as vital by the former for protecting or promoting their well-being in many different ways. They could do nothing on being told that the demanded information would not be disclosed and the officials could always take this stance as there existed no legal obligation on their part to do so. Understandably, this legal vacuum only bred authoritarianism and people’s helpless submission to even tyrannical or grossly unfair activities by institutions claiming authority from the state.
The RTI Act in Bangladesh enacted about a year ago was a laudable step forward in bringing about drastic changes in this situation. But in the absence of vigorous follow-up activities, it is proving to be just one of those hopeful steps taken by a government to be defeated for reasons of not establishing as well the mechanisms to properly enforce it. The RTI Act led to the formation of a commission to make the necessary rules and regulations and establish procedures for obtaining redress under the Act. But this commission is yet to take-off even a year after its existence. It has not yet been provided with funds, offices, manpower and other logistical facilities to even taken on minimum tasks to be able to facilitate the implementation of the RTI Act. Thus, this legislation has remained in the consciousness only of a very small section of the well informed elite and largely unknown to more than 80 per cent people of the country.
But even those who are aware of its existence, they would not be able to make any use of it till the rules, apparatuses and processes for taking recourse to it, are well laid. As for the general people who have not been ever made conscious of their rights, they can be only expected to resort to using the new legislation after intense publicity is conducted first for them to know that it exists and , more significantly, they are specifically showed the ways to actually utilizing it for their benefits.
A seminar was held recently in the Jatiya Press Club to highlight many aspects of the unfulfilled promises of the RTI Act. The government would indeed show itself to be responsive to people’s rightly felt anxieties by caring to examine the feedbacks from this seminar and acting positively on them at the soonest.
The Right to Information (RTI) Act has been in existence for over a year. But ironically, this Act which is full of significance in creating conditions for good governance, accountability of the government and promoting people’s basic rights to know about government’s decisions, actions or lack of actions and policies, remain hardly known to people for whose benefit it was introduced in the first place.
Legislations centred on RTI are in full force in many countries of the world specially in the ones which are developed and ruled democratically. The same were found to be powerful tools in asserting citizens’ rights to compel government bureaucracies to divulge information to people about matters of interest or significance to them. Bangladesh has long suffered from not having such an Act in place that only aided governmental institutions here plus the judiciary and the parliament, to cling to their culture of secrecy denying people the rights to know adequately about activities often with great consequences for them.
Typically, a concerned and aggrieved individual or groups of individuals in Bangladesh did not have any way of demanding information from governmental and other institutions to part with information considered as vital by the former for protecting or promoting their well-being in many different ways. They could do nothing on being told that the demanded information would not be disclosed and the officials could always take this stance as there existed no legal obligation on their part to do so. Understandably, this legal vacuum only bred authoritarianism and people’s helpless submission to even tyrannical or grossly unfair activities by institutions claiming authority from the state.
The RTI Act in Bangladesh enacted about a year ago was a laudable step forward in bringing about drastic changes in this situation. But in the absence of vigorous follow-up activities, it is proving to be just one of those hopeful steps taken by a government to be defeated for reasons of not establishing as well the mechanisms to properly enforce it. The RTI Act led to the formation of a commission to make the necessary rules and regulations and establish procedures for obtaining redress under the Act. But this commission is yet to take-off even a year after its existence. It has not yet been provided with funds, offices, manpower and other logistical facilities to even taken on minimum tasks to be able to facilitate the implementation of the RTI Act. Thus, this legislation has remained in the consciousness only of a very small section of the well informed elite and largely unknown to more than 80 per cent people of the country.
But even those who are aware of its existence, they would not be able to make any use of it till the rules, apparatuses and processes for taking recourse to it, are well laid. As for the general people who have not been ever made conscious of their rights, they can be only expected to resort to using the new legislation after intense publicity is conducted first for them to know that it exists and , more significantly, they are specifically showed the ways to actually utilizing it for their benefits.
A seminar was held recently in the Jatiya Press Club to highlight many aspects of the unfulfilled promises of the RTI Act. The government would indeed show itself to be responsive to people’s rightly felt anxieties by caring to examine the feedbacks from this seminar and acting positively on them at the soonest.