ISLAMABAD: While the Right to Information (RTI) Day was being observed on Saturday, Chief Information Commissioner Mohammad Azam Khan along with the members told a press conference that he was not getting administrative support from the government to run the commission.

They demanded the government provide budgetary and administrative support to the Pakistan Information Commission (PIC) so that the citizens would get access to information.

The press conference was jointly organised by PIC and the Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI) at the National Press Club.

The Right of Excess to Information Act was enacted in Oct 2017 under which all public bodies were supposed to proactively disclose their information by April 2018.

However, a majority of the public bodies still lag behind in either ensuring their online presence or, if their websites exist, provide only a limited amount of information proactively.

Though under the law PIC had to be established in six months, the previous PML-N government did not take any step in that regard. The PTI government notified the PIC on Nov 7, 2018, and nominated Azam Khan, a former information secretary, as the chief information commissioner.

Highlighting the challenges faced by PIC, Azam Khan said: “Implementation of Right of Access to Information Act 2017 is a mere deception without strong information commission at the federal level. There are inordinate delays in providing office space, budget and staff to the commission. We are operating fro m one room in the Information Services Academy without any staff and support.”

Despite all the challenges, the achievements of PIC are admirable, said Information Commissioner Zahid Abdullah.

“More than 100 RTI complaints have been received by the commission, notices were issued to public bodies and 35 cases have been resolved. As many as 25 hearings are conducted for processing of complaints and some are at the last stage of resolution.”

He said rules were finalised where filing of information request was free.

“We have written letters to all federal government departments for the designation of information officers (PIOs), proactive disclosure of information as section 5 of RAI Act 2017 and record management as per section 4 of the Act. All the three commissioners demand to strengthen the commission at the earliest,” he said.

Information Commissioner Fawad Malik highlighted the importance of public access to information held by government departments.

“We will train PIOs on RTI and will change their minds. Cultural of secrecy will change in Pakistan. Otherwise the commission has all the powers to penalise the government officers on violation of RTI law or curbing information,” he said.

CPDI Executive Director Amer Ejaz said RAI Act 2017 was better than the weak Freedom of Information Ordinance 2002 but it would serve no purpose if the strong RTI law was not operational.

Information commissioner Mr Abdullah told Dawn that as it was RTI Day they decided to demand the government provide support to the commission.

“We even don’t have an office and though funds have been allocated we cannot spend it due to bureaucratic hurdles. Even then we have received 116 complaints and a number of them have been addressed or are at the verge of being addressed,” he said.

Published in Dawn, September 29th, 2019