Punjab Information Commission goes on strike

LAHORE: The officers and staff of the Punjab Information Commission have refused to work in protest against the lack of service structure and understaffing leading to overwork and frustration.

According to sources, the commission was established in March 2014 under Article 19A of the Constitution and Right to Information Act 2013 to provide access to information to the public.

The Punjab government through a notification on 29th December 2014 approved a 47-member staff of the commission (one grade 19, three grade 18, nine grade 17, five grade 16, one grade 15, five grade 14, three grade 12, one grade 11. 1, 6 posts of grade 4 and nine posts of grade I).

However, the government did not allow the recruitment of these approved posts from March 2014 to March 2017 due to which the commission had no option but to work by recruiting seven people (matriculates) on daily wages. From April 2017 to May 2018, recruitment could not be done due to the non-appointment of information commissioners.

The commission finally made service regulations on its own in February 2019 and published them in the Punjab Gazette through the Law Department. It took more than a year for the commission to get an exemption from the government’s ban on recruitment and eventually it was allowed to make recruitments for only 22 posts in 2020 instead of 43 sanctioned posts. Out of these 22 posts, eight successful candidates refused to join the commission due to lack of adequate facilities. The commission is still working with only 13 staff members.

From July 2020 to date, the commission has been seeing permission to unban recruitments but to no avail forcing its employees to resort to strike for acceptance of their demands.