Proactive role of PIOs termed linchpin to ensure good governance

PESHAWAR: The proactive role of public information officers (PIOs) has been termed as linchpin to ensure good governance and transparency in public sector in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Chief Commissioner Right to Information (RTI) Commission Sahibzada Muhammad Khalid and RTI Commissioner Prof Kalimullah spoke at the concluding session of certificate awarding ceremony of the PIOs training at Pakistan Provincial Services Academy on Wednesday.
“Under the RTI Act, nothing is secret. Our legislators have done wonderful job by passing this Act, now the ball is in your court,” Sahibzada Muhammad Khalid told the PIOs.In the two-day training session of PIOs, more than 250 government officers from various departments across the province were given training about their role and responsibilities under the RTI Act 2013, as PIOs.
At the training session, RTI Commissioner Prof. Kalimullah stressed on the proactive role of PIOs. He asked the participants to take proactive measures in ensuring availability of public information to the applicants and their respective departments’ official websites.
“It is the responsibility of PIOs to ensure that all the information about official activities, including postings and transfers, official record, selection criteria, merit list and total budget expenditures must be uploaded to their websites so that the masses could know what exactly the government departments are doing,” he said.
He also said that with the assistance of IT Directorate, a new web-portal had been developed to facilitate the applicants seeking information from public office.“With a single click, now a requester will be able to file an RTI request while the PIOs have been made bound to reply to the requester,” he added.
Commissioner RTI Commission Abdul Matin, Justice Niaz Muhammad Khan and law expert Turab Khan Jadoon also spoke to the participants on the utility and importance of the law and the role of PIO in implementation of the law.Later, certificates were distributed among the participants where Director General PPSA Nighat Mehroz was also present.