The News on Sunday: PK: Sunday, December 17, 2017.
According to
a survey conducted in 2016 by Data Stories and Journalism Pakistan, nearly 76
per cent of the respondents said that they had never used the right to
information (RTI) laws to access data, while over 97 per cent believed that
official data was not easily available in the country.
Khalid
Khattak, senior reporter with The News, and founder of Data Stories, believes
that the use of RTI still remains low, at least in the Punjab. “It’s a mix of
reasons,” he says. “Not only are journalists unaware that laws exist which
empower them to access public information, but key posts of Chief Information
Commissioner and Information Commissioner at the Punjab Information Commission
(PIC) have both been lying vacant for months.
These vacant
posts have created a gap in the process of RTI, as it is the PIC which
intervenes to help get information for journalists and other individuals in
case of non-compliance of the public body from whom information has been
sought. Still, Khattak says that prior to the posts becoming vacant, he had
used the RTI numerous times successfully.
However,
Khattak is a minority. Numerous journalists and reporters that I spoke to said
that although they have heard of the RTI, they haven’t used it.
Across the
border in India, the use of RTI by journalists is widespread. “The biggest
proof of its success is that many RTI activists have been killed,” says Shivam
Vij, a journalist based in Delhi.
In Islamabad,
there is the Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI), and one of
the things they do is conduct workshops across the country to create awareness
on RTI and help journalists and others to submit requests for information.
Syed Raza
Ali, who is the coordinator, says that “the ratio of information sharing has
gone down in Punjab.” Apart from the posts lying vacant, Raza says that
numerous public bodies have not installed public information officers,
something mandated by law. The PIOs are supposed to provide information
requested via the RTI. Raza says that after the local bodies elections, posts
were revised and new notifications were to be issued, but that never happened.
Still, via
the CPDI, between 300 and 400 information requests were made during 2017, and
according to Raza, there has been minimal response.
On the face
of it, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa seems to have a better RTI set up in place. The
commission is fully manned, and public bodies have information officers in
place. However, according to Iftikhar Firdous, from The Express Tribune, all is
not well there either.
“Information
that benefits the department (from whom it is being gained) is readily
available,” he says. “But things that should be public knowledge yet go against
the sarkari mindset are difficult to retrieve.” Firdous reveals that RTIs have
been submitted on things as basic as asking how much money was donor funded
into government departments, and there has been no reply in over a year.
Another
problem in KP is the fact that although there are people in place, the law is
lacking. Issues such as the mechanism to fine PIOs who deny information to
individuals still remain unresolved. At the same time, the law does not bind
the government to appoint new information commissioners when the incumbent
commissioners complete their tenure.
And
importantly, the fact that the RTI law does not extend to the Provincially
Administered Tribal Areas (PATA). “The request sent by the KP Home and Tribal
Affairs department for extending the RTI law to PATA has been waiting for the
President’s approval for more than two years,” Firdous reveals.
The other two
provinces have completely different challenges when it comes to RTI. The Sindh
Transparency and Right to Information Act 2016 was approved in March 2017,
following which the Sindh Information Commission was to be formed within 60
days, to oversee the implementation of the law. The commission has still not
been formed.
“The response
rate to RTI is zero,” says Ali. And the case is no better in Balochistan. Under
the prevailing law in the province, the main appellate is the provincial
ombudsman who has no authority to impose fines on non-compliance to RTI
requests.
While the
right to information is fundamental for journalists, it is equally important
for other sections of society, including rights groups. Bytes for All is a
digital rights and advocacy group based in Islamabad. Their experience with RTI
is telling.
“67 requests,
and zero replies,” says Shahzad Ahmed, the country director, of Bytes for All.
“We did have one reply, but it doesn’t count, because the information provided
had nothing to do with what we had asked for.” To make matters worse, in the
aftermath of one of their requests, the group received a threatening email,
asking them the reasons for wanting the information requests.
Across the
border in India, the use of RTI by journalists is widespread. “The biggest
proof of its success is that many RTI activists have been killed,” says Shivam
Vij, a journalist based in Delhi. “However, the deaths have not slowed down its
use at all.”
Vij says that
while the bureaucracy is very opposed to RTI and does its best to not give
information, the law is strong, so it works somewhat. He adds that whenever there
has been an attempt to undermine RTI, activists have rallied against the move.
“RTI happened through social movements,” he says.
Here in
Pakistan, however, the awareness that RTI laws even exist remains its number
one problem.
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