Himalayan
Times: Kathmandu: Wednesday, September 04, 2019.
Government
bodies are bound to update and publish information related to their structures,
functions, and details of financial transactions, income and expenditure which
is also known as proactive disclosure, yet many of the government bodies are
not complying with this provision of the Right to Information Act.
Executive
Director of Freedom Forum Taranath Dahal said some government offices had not
made proactive disclosure for the last nine months. He said the government
bodies had started to publish details of the bills they were supposed to
reimburse in a few days, but most of them were not continuing the practice.
“This provision is designed to make procurement and financial transactions of
public bodies transparent because the public can lodge complaints if they think
a government body responsible for reimbursing bills should scrutinise the
process more,” Dahal added.
Information
Commissioner KiranPokharel said lack of punitive provisions in the existing
Right to Information Act for not making proactive disclosure could be a major
reason why government offices were not making proactive disclosure on a regular
basis.
“Under
RTI Act, a concerned authority can be punished for not providing information to
a petitioner, but there is no provision for punishment if any public body does
not make proactive disclosure,” Pokharel added.
He
said his office had recommended that the government amend the RTI Act to compel
concerned authorities to make proactive disclosure of information related to
their offices three months ago.
Pokharel
said government ministries and departments started making proactive disclosure
after his office wrote to them a few years ago, but most of the government
offices had not yet started doing that. “Only about 30 per cent government
offices have started making such disclosures. Government offices based in
districts have very poor record of making such disclosure.”
Pokharel
said some of the government offices and ministries were making proactive
disclosure but they were still not including all the required information in
the documents.
He
said the idea behind making it mandatory for government bodies to make
proactive disclosure was to ensure that government bodies should deem it their
duty to disseminate information that could benefit the public and they should
not wait till somebody filed a petition under the RTI Act.
As
per the RTI Act, government offices are supposed to make proactive disclosure
every three months.