"I want to know exactly how much subsidy is going to the Lahore Metro Bus, where have the funds for the youth festival come from and what is the procurement procedure for acquiring laptops for the youth scheme," says Muhammad Kashif, who runs a private school system in Lahore.
Kashif has questions in mind but is clueless about whom to approach in the government to get certified answers. His source of information is the mass media which, he says, often provides sketchy and conflicting information. Also, he thinks, information provided by the media is not always what people are looking for.
Being a tax payer, he has the right to question the use of public money or at least have up-to-date figures on expenditures.
A revealing piece of information for Kashif and others like him is that under the Punjab Transparency and Right to Information Act 2013, they can ask for information like the one cited above from the concerned departments. All they have to do is forward a request on prescribed forms or plain paper to the information officers appointed in these departments and wait for the answers -- for 14 days, no more. The time limit can be relaxed in certain circumstances and the officers have to assist inquirers if they are unable to file the request properly. And in case the information is delayed, two days of salary against every day delayed will be deducted from the salary of the information officer.
Under the law, the public body approached for required information shall not charge any fee, other than the actual cost of reproducing or sending the information to the inquirer.
The law also calls for constitution of an Information Commission which will hear appeals against cases and take measures to make it useful for the public and so on. The members of the commission shall comprise a person who has been or is qualified to be a judge of the high court, a person who is or has been in the service of Pakistan in basic scale 21 or its equivalent and a person from the civil society with requisite qualifications and experience.
Like the federal right to information law, there are exceptions as well under which information can be denied to the applicants.
The law appears good on paper but its real test will be how the Information Commission plays its role, says Zahid Abdullah, Chief of Transparency and Right to Information Programme at the Islamabad-based Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI).
So far, he says, there is no commission and there is no sunset clause in the law which sets deadline for its formation. It is quite contrary to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Right to Information Act 2013 which set a deadline.
The law says a public information officer may refuse information if it is likely to harm the national defence or security, public order or international relations of Pakistan, a legitimate privacy interest, the protection of legally privileged information or of the rules relating to breach of confidence, life, health or safety of any person, the prevention or detection of crime, the apprehension or prosecution of offenders, or the administration of justice, the ability of the government to manage the economy and so on.
Shahid Ghani, a Lahore-based lawyer, believes it is a tricky area where the role of Information Commission becomes extremely important. The commission has the powers to determine the public interest under section 13 (2) which states "…..if the Commission determines that the public interest in such disclosure outweighs the harm that shall or is likely to be caused by such disclosure, it may direct the public information officer to provide the information." So, the good thing is that there is a forum to decide whether withholding certain information is in national interest or not.
On the other hand, he says, there is no second opinion on holding back information on terrorists and criminals such as details of their whereabouts, their movement plans, deployment of policemen in plainclothes, itinerary of dignitaries under threat etc.
Zahid Abdullah says they had submitted information requests with the Punjab government but have not received an answer, despite the lapse of deadline. "There is nothing we can do as the information commission is yet to be constituted," he adds.
There is a general perception that Punjab is following KP in different fields, including legislation on right to information. It promulgated an ordinance when KP announced one and came out with a law when the latter got it approved from the assembly too.
Muhammad Aftab Alam, Executive Director, Institute for Research, Advocacy and Development (IRADA), says they have received response to more than 50 per cent of their queries made to the KP government.
The requests included information on the government’s compensatory packages for martyrs, the compensation given to the people and the particulars of the recipients. The information was vague but at least they had bothered to pass it on, says Alam.
He also sought details from the Punjab government on the number of private schools registered with the government and the revenue it earns under this head but never got any answer.
Alam thinks the governments will have to see whether they are overburdening their untrained staff with requests for information. The government structure is the same and there is no culture of cataloging, digitisation and maintenance of record in an organised manner.
Therefore, he says, setting short deadlines for provision of required information without reforming the record-keeping system will make things difficult for government officers.
Punjab and KP have set examples for the other two provinces -- to replicate the federal law. These laws ask the governments to go for proactive disclosure and publish maximum details about departments in print or on websites and publication of annual reports.
Though there are flaws that need to be fixed. For example, the KP law says anybody who seeks information for mala fide purposes shall be liable to a fine not exceeding Rs50,000 or imprisonment for a period not exceeding two years. A journalist seeking details of attendance of parliamentarians and the allowances they receive and then filing a news story on misuse of money under this head may fall in this category, says Abdullah who wants this clause to be scrapped.