Oherald: Goa: Monday, March 27, 2017.
Governments
come and Governments go. Once elections are over the “citizens” mostly referred
to as “voters”, a term I have begun to hate simply because it takes away my
identity as a Citizen, are actually being used as a “disposable commodity”.
Besides, we can no longer depend on the Opposition to fight our battles. So
what is left for the people to do when the Government and the Opposition let
you down?
The most powerful
tool in the hands of the people, is the Right to Information Act, but sadly is
it any longer? Kindly read on. Disturbed with the massive changes made in the
new Outline Development Plan (ODP) 2021 of Panjim, Dr Sabina Martins, a well
known activist, applied for a copy of the ODP along with other documents viz.
minutes of the Authority meeting, etc, under the Right to Information Act. She
was shocked to receive a reply from the Public Information Officer of the NGPDA
to make a payment of Rs 5068 for the said documents, presumably Rs 68 for the
other documents and Rs 5000 for the ODP of Panjim.
A lot of us
have been strong users of the Right to Information Act for years now, and found
out what an effective tool it has been to ensure good governance, that too at a
very low cost to the citizen. No department had ever asked us to shell out such
an exorbitant amount, including the NGPDA and Town Planning Department. We
always paid Rs 2 for a page copy and the actual photocopy charges for any
plans, because earlier like us, they too believed that we had a “right” to the
information we asked for. Dr Sabina Martins paid the amount of Rs 5068 and I
collected the copies on her behalf. However, I was not happy with the document
I had in my hand, and got that uneasy feeling of having been “cheated” by the
Government.
I walked into
a well known photocopy shop on the M G Road, and asked for the same document to
be scanned, and printed on exactly the same type and same size paper. It cost
me exactly Rs 1000 and I preserved the bill. I even chose the more expensive
option of scanning the document and printing rather than photocopying (for
which I would have paid only Rs 750) because I was not sure that the one the
NGPDA had given us was printed or photocopied. I called up the lady in charge
of RTI in the NGPDA, and when I confronted her as to why the huge cost, she
said that it was a decision taken by the Authority that all the “Outline
Development Plans 2021” will be issued at Rs 5000.
Since when
has the NGPDA got into business of “selling” documents? Are their coffers
getting empty? Or is this a devious idea of the Authority to dissuade citizens
from getting copies of the new Outline Development Plans under the RTI Act?
This arbitrary and perverse decision of the NGPDA defeats the very purpose of
the Act that promises transparency in governance to the common man. The
question that needs to be asked here is whether this decision of the NGPDA is
legal under the Right to Information Act?, or for that matter what stops the
NGPDA from hiking the charges to Rs 10,000 the next time around?
A close
friend suggested, I take this matter further and write to the Appellate
Authority and if it does nothing about it, take one more step and appeal to the
Chief Information Commissioner (CIC). At this I thought to myself, why have
honest citizens to always be the “suckers”, get cheated by your own Government
and then have them torture you by making you run from pillar to post till you
have spent your time, energy and maybe another 5000 bucks or more before you
get an Order in your favour (or maybe not).
Dr Sabina is
welcome to do that if she wants to, but I would expect the matter to be taken
up “suo-moto” in public interest, if not by the Appellate Authority or the CIC,
at least by the new Town and Country Planning Minister who has promised us
“Goenkarponn”. Mr Minister, can we have some “GOENKARPONN” in “GOVERNANCE”
starting with your department? That’s the least I can ask.
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