‘RTI on Wheels’ to empower Goans through awareness

The Navhind Times‎‎‎‎: Goa: Tuesday, November 08, 2016.

The Goa State Information Commission in collaboration with Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP) is holding a ‘RTI on Wheels’ drive to bring awareness of the Right to Information Act 2005 amongst the public and enable the public authorities in taking steps to promote its actions in conformity with the RTI Act.

The vehicle, specially designed to conduct awareness on RTI Act, has a projector, TV, public address system, and other multimedia equipment, and will be flagged off from city on November 5, followed by a demonstration programme.

Addressing the media, Chief Information Commissioner of Goa Prashant Prabhu Tendulkar, alongwith Pankti Jog, advocacy coordinator for Janpath and Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP), Ganpat Kuttikar, secretary and Juino de Souza, information commissioner, stated that the main aim of the drive is to reach out to maximum people of the state.

Tendulkar said the vehicle aims to build a harmony between information seekers and information providers. Municipalities and panchayats are more prone to avoiding information under Right to Information Act, he noted.

He said the CIC should be vested with more powers and a stronger support system to penalise erring officials.

He said the vehicle will be equipped with multi-media tools and accompanied by experts from Goa and Gujarat, travelling across Goa to create awareness among the poorer strata of the society besides focusing on imparting training to PIOs for delivering information to information seekers and implementation of Section 4 of RTI Act.He said on many  occasions the PIOs have failed to provide information because either they do not know anything like provision of the law or they are not properly trained for the job.

He also said only few sections of the society are making use of the Act while rest are not fully aware of it and as such “we are targeting the rural youth and college students.”

“We felt the need to create awareness at higher secondary and college level so that the Right to Information Act percolates down,” he added.

He said the citizens should avail of benefit of the ‘RTI on Wheels’ drive, that would be underway from November 5 to 18, as it would empower the citizens to know what the government has done and is doing for them besides allowing them to question the government, which leads to better people participation and good governance.