KP in RTI laws without filling the gaps

Sindh aping

ISLAMABAD: The Sindh government is aping the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in transparency and accountability; however, this imitation appears to be an exercise of decorating legislation with new titles but depriving it from the power required to make them useful for citizens and society.

A new RTI draft law is virtually a prototype of the Sindh Freedom of Information Act 2006 and the few clauses imported from the KP’s law are only those that may not pose any threat to the government on the question of transparency.

This bill is in contrast with a far better draft floated by 27 reputed civil society organizations but the provincial government has turned a blind eye towards it and is rather more receptive towards the officially-prepared draft, termed as bureaucratic brainwork done in haste without any feedback from the transparency campaigners.

Yet another draft, the Sindh Ehtesab Commission Bill, has been prepared on the pattern of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ehtesab Commission and the provincial secretary law told the Sindh Assembly on Wednesday that it was better than that of KP signaling their quest to follow the PTI. However, the reality of this bill will dawn when it is opened for public scrutiny and expert opinion.

As for as the newly-drafted RTI law is concerned, it is 70% copy of the existing law that is good for nothing as it creates more hurdles than facilitating public access to information.

Ironically, a respected PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar led a sub-committee of the Senate that authored a draft RTI law for enforcement at the federal level after taking input from the civil society organisations but his party’s government didn’t bother to solicit public input for legislation in Sindh.

The Sindh government chose to get it drafted from the bureaucrats of the Ministry of Information and Archives. Neither the expert opinion of Babar was sought nor opinion from an award-winning NGO working on transparency, Shehri and other campaigners.

Babar, who is pushing the federal government to pass the law drafted under his leadership, expressed ignorance about Sindh’s draft law, let alone his input in its preparation.

Shehri, together with the Coalition for Transparency & Access to Information that comprises 26 NGOs, drafted a law, got it examined from an international organization that scored it 139/150 marks and forwarded to the provincial government for consideration but has not received any feedback so far.

“We arranged a consultative session with the provincial lawmakers in order to brief them about our draft; 20 promised to attend and only two showed up,” said Dr Raza Gardezi, executive director of Shehri. There is no official word available on the draft we sent, he further explained.

Dr Gardezi-led campaigners have compared the newly-drafted government’s bill with the previous one that is presently in practice without making any contribution in promoting transparency.

The newly-drafted law of the government, for example, has retained a long and vague list of information exempted from public access as was the case in the previous legislation meaning thereby old wine in a new bottle.

The rules governing the pro-active disclosure are not different from the old ones. It also carries a cumbersome procedure of filing information request as was in the case of the existing law demanding application in a prescribed form instead of allowing it on simple paper permitted by the RTI laws in KP and Punjab.

The time duration for processing the requested information has been kept the same (21 days) contrary to 10 and 14 days respectively in KP and Punjab. Fee for requesting information has also been retained from the previous law unlike KP and Punjab.

There is no timeline defined for disposing of the complaint by the appellant authority. While the information commission has been made effective through granting the power of civil courts, the members of the commission will not be independent. They have been made subservient to the government empowered to remove them instead of the supreme judicial commission. The whistle blower’s clause has been added without promising any protection.