Oherald:
Goa: Saturday, October 27, 2018.
The
state government has not issued any proposal till date for setting up an online
RTI portal whereby applicants can submit their Right To Information (RTI)
application online, informed sources in the Goa State Information Commission.
The
RTI activists have been demanding an online portal for the last several years.
However, the Government of Goa has not taken any action so far in this regard.
The
existing site is in urgent need of receiving an upgradation. A high-level
officer in the Commission informed Herald that the site was developed by
Info-Tech Corporation (ITG) of Goa. However, the Commission was not happy with
the maintenance of the site by the ITG.
“The
State Information Commissioner had brought it to the notice of the ITG
officials. Later, they stopped maintaining the site,” said the official.
The
official informed that since ITG scrapped the empanelled list of consultants,
they are unable to upgrade the website in order to make it compatible with
modern browsers for being viewed on mobile devices.
The
official further informed that they are short of staff. “Someone should be
there to make sure all departments send the information and the information is
uploaded. The Commission had asked for staff but no headway was made,” said the
official.
In
the last two years alone, more than 700 cases were filed before the Goa State
Information Commission. Interestingly, in 2013 when the national RTI portal
rtionline.gov.in was set up, all the States including Goa had been requested
vide this Department’s letter dated December 3, 2013 to explore the feasibility
of implementing online RTI in their respective states. National Informatics
Centre (NIC) had been requested to provide technical support such as software
and source code to the state governments, which desired to replicate the web
portal for online filing of RTI applications at the state level. States like
Maharashtra and Delhi have set up their e-RTI portal. However, the Goa
government did not take any action.
Herald
contacted Shriram Raiturkar, a veteran RTI activist from Margao for his view on
this revelation.
He
said that many states are having an Online RTI portal.
“Mostly
in Goa, senior citizens apply for RTI and it becomes very troublesome to travel
from Margao or Canacona to Panjim to apply and to appeal in the first
appellate. If you apply for the first appellate in the Public Worls Department
(PWD), people have to travel to Altinho in Panjim. There is no transport from
Panjim bus stand to the PWD office,” Raiturkar said.
He
asserted on the need for an online system. “As per Section 4 of the RTI Act
they have to put all the information about the staff, their salary and other
information online but that is not done by the majority of departments,”,
Raiturkar further added.
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