'Access to information fundamental right of all citizens'

Access to information is the fundamental right of all citizens however, people are unaware of their rights of information through which government is also accountable. Freedom of information (FoI) and Right to Information (RTI) legislation are rules that guarantee access to data held by the state as.
This was discussed in a seminar on "Access to Information" organised by Shehri-CBE and Helpline Trust in collaboration with Friedrich Noman Foundation, at a local hotel here on Monday. Sameer Hamid Dodhy, Vice Chairperson, Shehri - CBE said that RTI legislation is a legal process by which requests may be made for government-held information to be received freely.
He said that the bureaucrats and other government officials are getting their salaries by the money which citizens pay in terms of taxes therefore, citizens have right to know where their money is going or going to be invested. To fulfil this right FoI is needed, he added.
When talking about malicious FoI application, Dodhy said that if FoI is malicious then it can be rejected by fining citizens is not the solution. He said that in Pakistan the Freedom of Information Ordinance first promulgated in 2002 making Pakistan the first South Asian country to enact such legislation.
Giving examples of information requests he said that till date the Act has not been fully implemented and accessing information is still difficult while the bureaucrats delay the completion of information process and the government departments hardly reply to the citizen's request.
Due to which SHEHRI-CBE recommends the policy of "hammer hammer and hammer" until you get the desired information, he added. While India has similar RTI law and the two major reasons, which make it effective in India that they have dedicated oversight body to implant these laws and if any government official delays giving information then he can be fined up to Rs 25,000 and this matter goes in his record while the penalties are automatically deducted from their salaries, he said.
Naeem Sadiq, an Activist presented his two case studies regarding access to information and said that I made 16 requests to the government departments but did not receive a single satisfactory answer. Hammering is just not enough and the law should be amended, he added.
He said according to the law designated Senior Official of every government department would deliver the required information within the period of 21days and if he doesn't then the matter can be taken to the Ombudsman. He added that the government departments are not willing to share information with citizens and they only respond when Ombudsman intervenes.
He suggested that each government department should display information on its website about their tenders, activities, policies, contracts, purchases, investments and etc and it should also be published in newspapers. He said that the information asking procedure should be displayed on Information Commissioner's website and Information Commissioner should apply penalties on the head of the department in case of delay or incorrect information and these penalties should be deducted directly from their salaries. He added that simple and powerful techniques should be used for awareness campaigns instead of massive campaigns on television.
Hamid Maker, Chairman, The Helpline Trust while addressing the seminar, said that access to information is the fundamental right of all citizens just as every citizen has the right of freedom of speech and expression. He said that to ensure transparency in government and to hold federal and provincial government more accountable the Freedom of Information 2002 was established. In order to establish good governance through the enforcement of rule of law the ordinance allows the citizen to have access to public records and to ask for information as their right, he added.
Hamid Maker said that unfortunately we lack the implementation and the citizens are not either aware of FoI ordinance and its advantages. Citizens are also not bothered to know and to use their rights, he added. He said that the Helpline trust had tried to use FoI ordinance to obtain a copy of the original privatisation agreement and subsequent amendments between Nepra, KESC and the Abraaj Gorup of Companies last year and sent repeated requests.
He said that after one year, we are still being stonewalled by the relevant departments and despite our repeated requests we have been completely ignored. Javed Jabbar, Former Federal Minister for Information, was also present at the occasion and said that access to information has always been an essential part of human life as information was a basic requirement since the beginning.
Giving the history of the FoI law in Pakistan he said that the law was first passed in 1997 by the caretaker government and was rejected by the democratic government of Nawaz Sharif. The law was finally re enacted in 2002 by Pervaiz Musharraf, he added.
He said that at this time we are far from the scarcity of information as there are many sources to provide us information. For the first time in our history we have the Chairman public accounts committee who is the leader of the opposition, there is an Auditor General, there is NAB and there is the media, he added.
He said that we made our government archives public in 20 years while UK makes it public in 30 years which shows that we are 10 years forward then UK at least in archives. We have 20 million pages of our archives waiting to be accessed by Pakistani public, he added.