Corrupt to be protected, info seekers to be punished

Sindh RTI draft law

ISLAMABAD: The Sindh government has drafted Right to Information (RTI) law that will protect the corrupt in order to save their “dignity” and penalise the requester by inquiring about their intentions for obtaining information.

Any whistleblower will share information at personal risk as no protection has been promised to such individuals in the newly drafted law of Sindh. The proposed law has widened its scope by brining courts in its ambit but excludes the Chief Minister Secretariat.

The provincial government of the PPP has long been promising a robust legislation on transparency but practical steps have belied the expectations of RTI activists. The previous draft introduced last year was a replica of the Sindh Freedom of Information Act 2006 which is good for nothing. That draft was withdrawn after it courted criticism from transparency advocates.

The Sindh Transparency and Right to Information Act 2016 draft will make Sindh third province to adopt a new law, if approved, after Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab. The shortcomings of KP and Punjab legislation on transparency notwithstanding, they are far better than this draft, analysis indicates.

Neither the KP law nor Punjab’s declares that information can be withheld in order to preserve the dignity of a citizen, a clause introduced only by Sindh. Article 10 of the draft law has enlisted the exceptions, the reasons for denying access to information.

Included among them is 10(K) that says the requester can be refused information if that “affects the dignity of a citizen” thus raising doubts about the intention of government to block any access to documents that could unmask the corruption of government authorities. This is in contrast with the conditions described for requesting information as indicates article 8(2) that reads: “The applicant shall be required to provide reasons for request for information….”

The Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI) that works on RTI has noted this clause with great concern. “It will give discretionary power to a public official to agree or disagree with the reasons provided by an applicant,” said Zahid Abdullah, coordinator of Coalition of RTI, presently associated with CPDI.

Since, right of access to information is a fundamental right under the Constitution, he argued, a citizen should not be bound to provide reasons for exercising this right. Interestingly, this condition was not even placed by Sindh Freedom of Information Act 2006, currently in practice, that is considered a toothless law and averse to transparency. No such provision can be found in KP or Punjab laws either. Instead, they have specifically prohibited inquiring about the intentions of requester for seeking any information.

While the proposed law of Sindh is concerned about the “dignity of a citizen” lest it is affected in case of information sharing about him, the law doesn’t offer any protection to the whistleblowers who would share any details of wrongdoing in government departments.

The KP RTI law stands out in this regard by protecting citizen but not of Punjab. As the questions were raised after the passage of Punjab law in 2014 without any clause about the whistleblower, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had then promised introducing a separate law exclusively dealing with the whistleblower, it has not yet seen the light of the day even after two years.

Sindh’s draft law appears to test the patience of a requester who will have to wait for 45 days for the provision of information and then file complaint to the information commission in case of denial from the concerned department. Article 8(3) of the proposed law reads: “The designated official shall respond to the applicant as soon as possible and in any case within 30 working days. In case, the required information is not readily available, the designated official shall intimate the applicant and taken another 15 working days for responding to the application.”

The responding period in KP and Punjab is lesser than what has been described in Sindh’s law. The KP law requires the provision of information within 10 working days with a grace period of as much days in case the requisite details are not readily available. The law in Punjab gives 14 working days to the designated official and as much extra time in case the processing of details is time-taking.

Another point of note in Sindh’s law is minimum punishment for the officers refusing information when compared with other two provinces. The maximum penalty for defiant officer has been prescribed in article 15 as a “fine which may extend to 10,000 rupees” in contrast with Rs25,000 in KP and Rs50,000 in Punjab.

In the definition of public bodies prescribed under Article 2(h), the courts and governor secretariats are included among other government and semi-government departments. Only institution missing is the Chief Minister Secretariat meaning thereby the highest provincial office can’t be called into questions in terms of its performances and spending of public money.

There is no exemption for CM Secretariat in Punjab and KP laws in contrast to draft law of Sindh. However, KP has courted controversy in 2015 by excluding provincial assembly from the ambit of RTI law and later promised to reverse this amendment in the ‘next’ assembly session. Many sessions have been held without taking up this promised task.