Senate body agrees on 10 clauses of Right to Information Bill 2016

ISLAMABAD: The Senate’s Select Committee on Right to Information Bill 2016 on Wednesday agreed on 10 clauses of the bill after a thorough debate and decided to review 12 more in its next meeting.

The committee meeting chaired by Farhatullah Babar was attended among others by Pervaiz Rashid, Syed Shibli Faraz, Mukhtiar Ahmad Dhamrah and Rubina Khalid, Minister of State for Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage Marriyum Aurangzeb besides senior officials of the Ministries of Information and Broadcasting and Law and Justice.

The body discussed the clauses about retrieving particular record, computerisation of record, nomination of concerned officers in federal departments, responsibilities of the officers, procedure to submit application, non-availability of required information procedure to accept or reject applications, timeline to entertain the application, application fee, restricted information and third party.

Minister of State Marriyum Aurangzeb replied different queries posed by the committee members to their entire satisfaction and clarified observations made by the chairman on different clauses of the bill. Shibli Faraz raised the point that an applicant desiring to get any information from any federal department must be a citizen of Pakistan. Upon which the minister said all such matters were included in the bill.

Pervaiz Rashid said the bill was drafted keeping in view the issues relating to national security and with an objective to prevent misuse of the information.  The committee chairman suggested omitting words subject to availability of funds from the clause regarding computerisation of the record saying departments could avoid computerisation of their data record on that pretext.

Later talking to media persons he said the committee had so far agreed on 10 clauses of the bill and sought further clarification on some points. Remaining clauses would be debated in the next meeting, he added.

Marriyum Aurangzeb said the bill would help ensure more transparency and good governance in departments. She said legislation on access to information was the fulfillment of another commitment made by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz in its manifesto. The minister said the meeting discussed different clauses of the bill in detail especially relating to national security and international relations.