Govt urged to implement RTI Act.

Daily Times: Karachi: Thursday, February 18 2106. 

Strengthening Participatory Organization (SPO) under the Citizens' Voice Project of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) organised provincial round-table on Tuesday.

The event was aimed at discussing the charter of demands reflecting the issues identified through community based interventions and suggestions on need of having laws and institutional mechanisms for effective implementation of RTI and Sindh Freedom of Information Act 2006 in Sindh.

Participants from Education, Health, Social Welfare, Women Development, Local Government, Rural Development and Public Health Engineering departments attended the event.

The representatives of community based organisations, civil society members, social activists and members of PPP, PML-N and PML-F from also attended the event.

Raheema Panwar presented community based charter of demands that reflected the issues and recommendations for effective legislation and implementation of right to information and freedom of information. 

It was unfolded that most of the government employees did not know about The Sindh Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, 2006, as there is no consultation on district budgets, no information storage mechanism at district and provincial level, no proactive information disclosure mechanism and there is lack of designed official for providing the information to the citizens on their requests.

Most of the members of political parties do not know that FOI is not against their party policy as per their manifestos. It said the government employees feel threatened to provide information to the applicants.

It was also shared that primary and middle schools particularly girls' are closed or not functional due to the lack of availability of teachers.

Misuse of funds for different project schemes, non-functional basic health units, dispensaries, pathetic condition of public parks, roads, streets, community centres, filter plants and the issues of sewerage lines have been raised by citizens through this project in their applications to ombudsman offices and other public departments for effective and equitable service delivery.