Times of India: Kanpur: Wednesday,
April 17, 2013.
The Public
Information Officers (PIOs) at various government departments in the city are
having no knowledge of Right To Information Act (RTI), 2005 and its clauses.
Majority of departments have non-law candidates serving the post of PIOs. In
the absence of any proper guidance and workshops, these officials face problem
in addressing the RTI queries and hence large number of them (RTIs) remain
pending.
These
findings came out in the survey conducted by the students of University of
LEAD, England and New Law College, Pune who were on three day tour to the city
from April 8 to 10. These students under their final year (graduation)
assignments have chosen to study the RTI status in India.
"We have
collected the information of pending RTIs from Central Information Commission.
UP is having high number of pending RTIs. Kanpur and Lucknow being the
prominent cities of the state were selected to conduct our survey,"
informed David, Phd student of LEAD University, England.
He added that
during the survey of various government departments in Farukhabad, Amethi,
rural areas of Kanpur and Kanpur city, it was found that all the departments
were having their regular staff serving the post of PIOs. This according to him
was the major reason of unfinished RTI queries in the state.The students also
conducted the survey among the locals as well in the same areas where the
residents of Farukhabad and Amethi were found least aware and concerned about
RTI. In Unnao and Kanpur city people were seemed to be aware of the meaning but
not even 2% of them have every used RTI.
The student
team also distributed pamphlets to the locals for creating RTI awareness among
masses.Rachel, another student said that she visited municipal department,
health department, district collectorate, Kanpur Development Authority (KDA),
KESCO, Police department, nursing department and many other and found similar
mismanagement everywhere.
"In
health department there was a doctor serving the post of PIO while in nursing
department, a nurse was on the post of PIO. In KESCO and Municipal corporation,
their regular clerks and employees were dealing with the RTI queries,"
informed Rachel.
She added
that no one among any department's PIOs were having knowledge of RTI sections,
rules and legislation.
"Not
only this these officials are not even provided any guidance or workshop from
government to enhance their skill and ability to deal with RTI queries,"
said Shreshta Nanda, student of New Law College, Pune who was accompanying
David and Rachel in their survey.
Commenting on
the non-availability of guidance and workshops, Dr AK Saxena, Additional Chief
medical officer (CMO) and PIO of health department said that he has not been
guided on how to deal with RTI. He added that he is answering large number of
RTIs and legal advise has been provided by senior officials of the department.
Similar words
were echoed by Vinay Rai, PIO of Kanpur Municipal Corporation (KMC) who is also
the in-charge of Zone-5.
Concerned
over the survey result of these students, the city based NGO working for RTI
awareness decided to conduct workshops and guidance sessions for the PIOs of
various government departments.
"We will
take permission of district magistrate to conduct RTI awareness workshops of
the government department PIOs. This will help the officials to understand the
requirement of RTI and their responsibility towards the same as well,"
said Abhishek, member of Janta Soochna Kendra.
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