Six yrs gone, RTI Act still awaits its \\\'real take-off\\\'

Only 69,862 applications were submitted to various government and non-government offices since the enactment of the Right to Information (RTI) Act six years back, which the Information Commission itself says a very poor response compared to the country's population, reports UNB.
"This is evident that the country's people haven't been informed about the law and its provision. So, the main challenge to implement Right to Information act is to make people aware about it to inspire them to use it," the Commission says in its Annual Report 2014.
The law started its journey when the Right to Information Ordinance was promulgated on October 20, 2008. Later, the Right to Information Bill was passed in Parliament on March 29, 2009, making it a full-fledged law to empower the citizens by promoting transparency and accountability in the working of the public, autonomous and statutory organisations and other private organisations.
The Information Commission in its annual report identified 13 challenges to implement the Act.
The RTI Act says there will be a designated officer in every office -- both government and non-government ones-to provide information.  But the report says, so far only 55 per cent government offices have got assigned officers to provide information, while it is only 45 per cent in non-government offices.
The report added that every ministry and its sub-ordinate directorates have introduced their own websites, but those are hardly updated. Besides, most ministries have published annual reports but most subordinate directorates did not publish annual reports.
Lack of interest among the designated officers to provide information, absence of proper facilities to preserve information, ambiguity and limitations in the RTI Act in some cases, inadequate fund allocations for government offices to gather and furnish information, complexities to identify appellate officials, lack of authorities' drive to develop the culture of providing information are among the major challenges to implement the RTI Act, according to the annual report.
Lack of interest among journalists and media people to use the RTI act, lack of clear idea among assigned and appellate officials about the law, dependency on higher authority to provide information and lack of logistic support in the offices of the designated officer are the challenges the Commission facing in implementing the law.
In the report, the Commission made 14 recommendations to implement the law. It recommended having power to draw contempt of court proceedings against errant party to effectively implement the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
"It's possible to implement the Right to Information (RTI) Act effectively by empowering the Commission to draw contempt of court proceedings against errant party and with other time-befitting and effective systems," the report said.