Making people aware of the Right to Information Act 2009 and encouraging them to use it is the main challenge in implementing the law, says the Information Commission, reports UNB. In its Annual Report-2016, the Commission notes that although the Right to Information Act was enacted to ensure the free flow of information, common people have little idea about it and its provisions as its practice is still very limited.
A delegation of the Information Commission, led by Chief Information Commissioner Prof Dr Md Golam Rahman, recently submitted its Annual Report-2016 to President Abdul Hamid at Bangabhaban.
According to the report, a total of 6,369 applications were submitted to the authorities concerned in 2016 by information seekers using the RIT Act while 82,412 applications in the last eight years.
The number of applications, submitted by information seekers, is very poor compared to the country's population, which proves that general people are not well informed about the RTI Act or most of them who know about it are not using it to get information, the report says.
About the limitations of government agencies in making information available, the report says the storing capacity of documents in different departments and agencies is decreasing gradually. All the agencies also have no equal faculties to store information or documents.
Noting that if information or data cannot be preserved properly, it is not possible to reveal data proactively or provide it to the information seekers as per their demand, the Commission said an initiative has to be taken to store data or information digitally by setting up a connecting network across the country.
The Commission finds that the authorities concerned cannot implement the tasks what they are supposed to do under the Right to Information Act, and do not able to publish their annual reports since the government offices have no adequate budget to do so.
The report also reveals that the authorities concerned have no effective steps to build a culture of making information available, the designated information officers have no proper knowledge on the RIT act and they get limited logistic supports, and there no effective measure to encourage media personnel to use the RTI Act.
The Commission in its annual report put forward a set of recommendations to implement the RIT Act effectively and make information available to people.
The recommendations include providing adequate logistics to the designated information officers; publishing annual reports and updating websites of the departments, directorates, ministries and other offices; strengthening monitoring on the NGO's activities taken for the implementation of the RTI act; holding video conference-based hearing, and releasing information proactively in the interest of the public.