News
International: PK: Sunday, September 30, 2018.
The
Coalition on Right to Information conferred RTI Champions Awards 2018 on Riaz
Khan Daudzai and Zohaib Hassan in the Journalist and Citizen and Best
Performing PIO categories respectively, at an award ceremony held here Friday.
The
ceremony coincided with an open discussion on International Right to Know Day,
where senior government officials, present and former information commissioners,
public information officers, investigative journalists, common citizens and
CSOs brushed shoulders and and reflected on the significance of the day.
Senator
Ferhat Ullah Babar was the chief of the ceremony. Riaz Khan Daudzai, the winner
in the Journalist category, had made effective use of existing national and
sub-national RTI legislation in the country to do his investigative stories.
His stories not only unearthed corrupt and unlawful practices, but also led to
course correction in some cases. Zohaib Hassan, the winner in the Citizen
category, being a person with disability, he has made excessive use of RTI laws
for solving issues of PWDs and improving the quality of service delivery at the
local level.
Mukhtar
Ahmed Ali, founding director CPDI and former Punjab Information Commissioner
added that although government departments are striving hard for dissemination
of information, there is still a need to change behaviours for the purpose.
Two
reports on the status of online proactive disclosure of information in
provincial departments in Punjab and KP were also launched on the occasion. The
studies analyze the compliance of proactive disclosure clause mentioned in KP
RTI Act (sec 5) and Punjab T& RTI Act 2013 (sec 4) by the provincial
departments. The reports show that as compared to Punjab, KP departments are
leading in online proactive disclosure as per set criteria. KP RTI Commission
scored highest with 95% of online proactive disclosure in KP. On the other
hand, the Punjab Provincial Assembly comes at the top with 88% of online
proactive disclosure in Punjab.
Expressing
views about the status of access to information in Pakistan, Amer Ejaz,
Executive Director CPDI, opined that despite having effective RTI laws,
implementation and operationalisation of these laws is still over-passed by
government departments. The government has not fully accepted our right to
know. After more than a year, RTI laws in Sindh and at the Federal level are
still not operationalised. He demanded that appellate forums should be
established at the earliest. The need of enacting effective RTI law in
Balochistan was also highlighted.
The
event was jointly organised by CRTI, KP Information Commission and Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.
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