Corporation ducks RTI queries on disease, deaths

Times of India: Chennai: Monday, 01 September 2014.

The tenacity of Corporation of Chennai's health department down with a severe and apparently incurable type of noinformationitis is formidable to say the least. No matter how many requests for data it receives on diseases or deaths, it will not capitulate.

The message is always the same: "We do not have any information on the subject."

Activists charge the department with repeatedly covering up deaths and disease outbreaks in the city, using Section 7(9) of RTI Act. The section 7 (9) of the RTI Act states: "Information shall ordinarily be provided in the form in which it is sought unless it would disproportionately divert the resources of the public authority or be detrimental to the safety or preservation of the record in question."

TOI filed nine RTI applications seeking information from the health department to check how the civic body responded to such petitions, specifically on pleas for data pertaining to deaths. All replies were rejected under section 7 (9) of RTI Act.

Activists say the health department widely misuses the section to stonewall queries. "Every citizen has the right to access information on deaths from the corporation under the RTI Act," said Vijay Anand, coordinator of NGO 5th Pillar. "The department should ideally post updated data it on its website. The information commission should take suo motu action against the department for misusing the RTI Act."

"If a minister or collector asks these particulars, then these officials will have the details ready in two days. When an ordinary citizen does, they will come up with any excuse to deny information," he said.

Sources say senior officials have instructed the public information officer (PIOs) of the health department not to divulge details on cases of tuberculosis, dengue, malaria, H1N1, diarrhoea to the public. The decision was taken after the suspension of city health officer P Kuganantham following a TOI report that the corporation was covering up cholera deaths.

"We have received instructions from senior officials not to provide information on deaths as it may invite trouble," a corporation official said.

When contacted, Kuganantham refused to comment on the issue.

TOI had also recently reported that health department refused to provide details in response to a petition under the RTI Act, of cases and deaths in Chennai due to multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB).

This is in violation of Section 4 of the RTI Act, which makes regular cataloguing and indexing of records compulsory. Other provisions of the legislation stipulate that information be shared by PIOs of public departments and that all departments digitise records and regularly update this information on their websites.

Public health experts said keeping records confidential could have adverse repercussions when it comes to response preparedness for outbreaks. "This secrecy also hinders medical research because in the absence of accurate figures there is no way to study the prevalence of any disease or disease subtype" a senior doctor said.