The News International: Islamabad:
Tuesday, September 27, 2016.
Pakistan is a
country where even the information minister doesn’t have access to information
of his own ministry.
Senator
Pervaiz Rashid, the Minister for Information, opened his heart to journalists
on Monday describing how his curiosity to know the beneficiaries of secret
funds was dealt with the denial of access to information.
The outcome,
the minister said, was not different when he tried to facilitate an RTI
requester in 2015 seeking details of the lawyers hired by the federal
government and the fees paid to them from the law ministry, then headed by him.
Addressing a
ceremony organised by the Coalition of Right to Information for giving RTI
Champions Awards 2016, the minister also reiterated his commitment for tabling
before the federal cabinet the draft RTI law that’s aimed at replacing a weak
Freedom of Information Ordinance 2002.
When that
will be tabled before the cabinet is what he stopped short of promising this
time after failing to keep his pledge more than nine occasions in the
past. The minister’s reassurance and
resolve on the bill came in his speech after Senator Farhatullah Babar
pronounced his frustration through an ultimatum.
The law,
drafted by the Senate’s Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting,
will be laid in the next session of the Upper House as a private members bill
signed by all the opposition parties, he warned.
“I can’t
understand that why a promise repeatedly made before the Senate Standing
Committee (on Information and Broadcasting) by the minister and reiterated in
parliament isn’t being honored,” Babar said in his address to this award-giving
ceremony at the National Press Club.
Azaz Syed of
Geo TV and Sirmed Ali received the RTI Champion Awards by the Coalition of
Right to Information coordinated by Zahid Abdullah who has long been working
for the promotion and practice of this right from the platform of the Center
for Peace and Development Initiatives.
As the award
winners spoke about the problems they faced in securing the requested
information, Senator Pervaiz Rashid, blamed the bureaucracy for denying public
their right to know.
“Like
journalists, civilian governments don’t have access to the information either,”
the minister claimed that he further elaborated through examples. He said he
wanted to know about the beneficiaries of the secret funds, details already
sought by the Supreme Court.
Despite
repeated efforts and the warnings, I received the information that was good for
nothing, he said. “As I started reading the documents provided, I couldn’t find
the clue who and how the secret fund was used.”
The minister
who also held the portfolio of law, justice and parliamentary affairs division,
further explained his efforts in vain to help out this correspondent in getting
details of the lawyers and the fee paid to them sought through an RTI request.
However, what
he failed to mention is the lack of democratisation in the access to
information that reflects through discrimination in the treatment made between
the lawmakers and the common citizens.
Any question
sent by a lawmaker through Parliament is immediately answered by the concerned
department fearing reprisal in the event of denial. Even if the same question
is asked by a journalist or a citizen, it goes unanswered by the respective
department.
This
correspondent filed RTI requests, repeating the questions already answered to
the Parliament, that failed to get replies on the ground that the information
is not ‘public.’
Federal
Public Service Commission, for instance, had submitted a list before the
National Assembly in 2009 giving details of each candidate who had appeared in
the CSS examinations along with his domicile and status of the result.
The question
was then asked by PML-N MNA Baligh-ur-Rehman. When this correspondent repeated
that question in 2014, the information was denied on the grounds that FPSC didn’t
maintain such details.
The
privatization commission was not forthcoming either. The PPP Senator Saeed
Ghani asked in 2011 about the post-privatization mechanism to monitor the
implementation status of the privatized entities.
He was told
that no such mechanism existed, to begin with. When inquired by this
correspondent in 2015, the commission refused information on the grounds that
this was not for sharing with the public.
Speaking
about the culture of secrecy, Senator Farhatullah Babar said that nobody wanted
to share the information including the media houses as they refused giving
exact details of their circulation statistics when inquired by the Parliament.
“But the worst example in this regard is the security establishment,” he said.
Senator Babar
also deplored the non-seriousness of the government in tabling the RTI bill
drafted by the Senate Sub-Committee on Information and Broadcasting, headed by
him.
The
information minister promised seventeen months ago, Babar said, that the bill
will be passed from the cabinet as a government bill and that is still being
awaited.
Instead of
sending there, another committee was formed to reconsider this bill. What
amendments are being made is beyond our information; he said and disclosed that
the same bill will now be tabled by the opposition parties as a private members
bill in the next session.
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