Schools dept fails to grant RTI request even in five months

LAHORE
School Education Department (SED) Punjab has failed to furnish information on a Right to Information (RTI) request filed under Punjab Transparency and Right to Information Act 2013 despite lapse of over five months.
This correspondent had filed an RTI request to the office of Secretary SED under his office diary No. 940 on February 02, 2015, seeking information about the number of public schools adopted by NGOs/private organizations or trusts, etc. across the province. The information about the policy with regard to adoption of a public school was also sought.
According to Section 10 (7) of the Punjab Transparency and Right to Information Act 2013, “The public information officer shall respond to an application as soon as possible and in any case within 14 working days, provided that this may be extended by 14 working days where this is necessary, because the request requires a search through a large number of records or consultation with a third party or any other public body, but the public information officer shall provide information relating to life or liberty of a person within two working days of the receipt of the application.”
However, when this correspondent did not receive any response from SED Punjab a complaint was filed with the Punjab Information Commission on March 13, 2015, as per law about the delay in provision of the required information. The very next day the commission forwarded the complaint to Secretary SED, asking him to immediately provide requested information latest by March 23. He was called upon to designate one or more public information officers (PIOs) for the department under Section 7 of the RTI Act. A reminder was also sent by the Punjab Information Commission on March 30 but to no avail.
On May 21, the commission once again wrote to the Secretary SED (with the note: for his personal attention please) calling upon him to personally look into the complaint. “....ensure that either the complainant immediately gets the requested information or the reasons of not doing so...”, reads the commission’s second reminder.
Nonetheless since then except a letter from EDO Education Pakpattan (claiming that none of the public school has been adopted by any NGO in the district) this correspondent has not received any information from the Schools Department or the Punjab Information Commission raising doubts as if the government wants to conceal the facts vis-à-vis this important information of public interest.
Interestingly, as per a recent media report, Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI) in its annual report observed, “Punjab has scored the highest marks in terms of effective RTI legislation when measured against the global best practices while Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has slid down in the ranking due to the negative amendments enacted recently in addition to other problems in the law.”
The fact is excelling in legislation alone is not worth-appreciating if implementation is missing. It is therefore the report while comparing the two RTI laws also observes, “Even in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab where effective right to information laws are in place, public bodies fail to share information.”
This concealment of facts/information is certainly point of concern when such details same do not fall under Sections 13 and 14 of Punjab and KP RTI laws, respectively, which exempt governments from sharing certain information-related national interest.
Section 15 of the Punjab RTI law states, “Where a public information officer has, without any reasonable cause, refused to receive an application, has not furnished information within time limits, or malafidely denied the request or knowingly gave incorrect, incomplete or misleading information, the Commission may, after providing sufficient opportunity of defense to the public information officer, direct the public information officer to pay fine not exceeding two days’ salary for each day of delay or to pay fine which may extend to fifty thousand rupees.”
Sources in the SED Punjab said the department has yet not designated PIOs, as there was no disclosure of this information under section 4 of the Punjab RTI law. This fact can be confirmed as the information about PIOs of SED Punjab is not available on the Information Commission’s website unlike many other departments.
When contacted, Punjab Information Commission’s Information Commissioner Mukhtar Ahmad Ali said the RTI law was a relatively new initiative in the province and hence there were some issues vis-à-vis its implementation. He also said delay in provision of information was primarily because the public bodies did not have designated PIOs.
He said the Commission issued circulars vis-à-vis the PIOs to public bodies on various occasions and it was hoped that the same would be designated soon by these bodies. The information commissioner assured this correspondent that the required information would be provided as per law.