RTI turns four, but is not a strong tool yet
Sidharth Misra
by Puneet Nicholas Yadav / DNATuesday, October 13, 2009 3:07 IST Email
New Delhi: Four years have passed since the UPA government enacted the
Right to Information (RTI) Act, but implementation of the landmark
legislation has been heavily flawed, a survey has found.
It was commissioned by the Centre's Department of Personnel and
Training (DOPT) and conducted by consultancy firm
PricewaterhouseCoopers. It took feedback from over 2,000 information
seekers and 200 information providers, and studied the act's level of
awareness among 5,000 citizens.
"The awareness level of citizens regarding their rights as an
appellant under RTI is minimal," said SK Sarkar, joint secretary,
DOPT, at the annual convention of the Central Information Commission
(CIC).
The survey report says: "Over 75% of information seekers were
dissatisfied with the quality of information provided [under the
act]... 26% of citizens had to pay more than three visits to submit
applications and 47% said there were no signboards to help them with
the process."
The behaviour of public information officers (PIO) is an area of grave
concern, Sarkar said. "There have been several instances when PIOs
have discouraged people from filing RTI applications. Nearly 59% of
applicants have complained about discourteous PIOs.
"While the attitude of PIOs needs to be changed, drastic steps towards
capacity building also need to be taken... a significant number of
PIOs have claimed that they have not been provided adequate training
to deal with RTI applications."
Another survey, conducted by the National Campaign for People's Right
to Information (NCPRI), shows the severe lack of financial and
infrastructure support for the information commissions.
"While 50% of the information commissions stated that the budgets
allocated to them were inadequate, 85% complained of inadequate staff.
Additionally, nearly 60% of the commissions did not have what they
considered to be adequate infrastructure," said NCPRI's Shekar Singh.
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