Pakistan Today: Karanchi: Friday,
May 05, 2017.
The Centre
for Peace and Development Initiative (CPDI) on Thursday organised a seminar
titled ‘Operationalising Sindh Transparency and Right to Information Act 2016’
at a local hotel in the metropolis.
Elected
representatives, experts, civil society representatives and journalists
attended the event.
The right to
information (RTI) act serves as a check and balance tool and keeps the
government on the edge to improve, said senior journalist and human rights
activist Zubida Mustafa, while addressing the seminar.
Zubida said,
“It is now time to implement a progressive and an effective Right to
Information Act 2016 not only at the federal but also at the provincial level”.
She further
said that after the KP and Punjab governments passed their respective and
internationally acclaimed right to information laws and established their
independent Information Commissions in 2013, it was natural to expect such
commissions from the Sindh and Balochistan governments, and the federation to
replace their restrictive freedom of information laws.
On the
occasion, Sindh MPA Mehfooz Yar Khan said that in September 2016, the Sindh
Cabinet approved the draft of the “Sindh Transparency and Right to Information
Bill 2016” which is currently under consideration by a committee for further
consideration. Khan said that he and his party MQM-P will ensure that the Sindh
government takes immediate steps to operationalise the law.
CPDI
Programme Manager Zahid Abdullah, while addressing the seminar, said that
although the two provinces and the federation had repeatedly expressed their
intention to introduce a new right to information laws in their respective
domains, but the action on this had been extremely slow.
Pakistan is
moving towards a more transparent and democratic system which aimed at ensuring
that public money does not fall prey to misuse and corruption, Abdullah
concluded.