Officials Face Music for Shoddy Implementation of RTI Act

The New Indian Express: Vijayawada: Tuesday, 29 July 2014.

State information commissioner P Vijaya Babu has asked the chief secretary of Andhra Pradesh to see that the officials of various departments respond to the applications filed under the Right to Information Act (RTI Act). He also charged the higher officials of the revenue, panchayat raj, labour, DRDA and DWMA department with negligence with regard to the implementation of the RTI Act.

Addressing a press conference here Monday, the commissioner said that the government would not spare any official who was not serious about the implementation of the RTI Act and added that he had imposed fine on four officials of the Labour Department for not attending a hearing in the city between July 21 and 23.

“A maximum fine of `25,000 had been imposed on the assistant commissioner of labour, Machilipatnam, for not furnishing information and for not attending hearings of the commission. Deputy commissioners of labour based at Eluru and Nellore have also been imposed a penalty of `10,000. The joint commissioner of labour, Guntur, has been imposed a fine of `5,000 for not furnishing information within the stipulated time and for not attending the hearing of the commission,” he added. They have been slapped with the fine on charges like ‘not furnishing information within the specified time’ and providing ‘misleading information’ under sub-section (1) of Section 20 of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005.

He said that he had issued show-cause notices to the panchayat officers of Guntur, Nellore, Krishna, East Godvari, Anantapur, Kurnool and Chittoor districts. Zilla Parishad CEOs of Vishakapatnam and Chittoor districts, labour commissioner, Hyderabad, assistant labour commissioner, Machilipatnam, project directors of DRDA of Prakasam, Chittoor and East Godavari districts, project directors of DWMA of Guntur, Prakasam and East Godavari districts for negligence in the disposal of the petitions under RTI.

“As they are not responding to the notices, the CS had to intervene and see that the law is implemented properly,”  he added.

INFO MUDDLE

·       information commissioner says that the officials are not implementing the RTI Act properly.

·      Several officers have been slapped with show-cause notices.

·      State Information commissioner Vijaya Babu seeks the intervention of the chief secretary.

·      6,897 cases disposed (including appeals, complainants and others) against the total number of the received cases 6,996.