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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | RTI: 400 govt offices in district, but no PIO names

RTI: 400 govt offices in district, but no PIO names

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published Published on Mar 14, 2011   modified Modified on Mar 14, 2011
Out of 400 government offices in the Pune district, till January 2010, not even a single one had a board displaying the names of the Public Information Officer (PIO) or the Appelate Authority.

However under the Right to information Act (RTI), 2005, it is mandatory for all offices to display such information prominently. A year later 240 of them have put up the boards with names, addresses and contact numbers of both officers.

All with the efforts of Dattatray Saikar and Sanjay Jadhav, activists from Bhrashtachar Virodhi Jan Andolan Manch, these offices have taken swift action in an year, after they visited these 400 government offices in 1000 towns in the Pune district. Till then none of the offices had done it in the stipulated 120 days given to them after RTI Act came into force in 2005, or even five years after that.

Saikar, a resident of Hinjewadi, and a farmer by profession, said, “I come from a rural background in Phaltan. After the Act was passed nobody in such parts of the nation seemed to know anything about it. Even if they knew abouyt Right to information Act, they would not know who to go to in a government office. So I attended a seminar on Right to information Act at YASHADA after which I decided to take up the cause of the boards as I was surprised to know that it was mandatory under the Act but almost none of the government offices had such boards.”

He also contacted 228 officers for displaying the total staff strength in their office and their salaries as directed by the RTI Act in May 2010. Of them 30 have replied back to him saying that information has also been put up by them.

On Sunday Saikar and Yashwant Oak, producer and distributor of the movie Ek Cup Chya were given the Sajag Nagrik Mahiti Adhikar Awards 2010 here on Sunday for their contribution towards creating awareness about RTI.

Oak's movie is about how a bus conductor gets a faulty electricity bill of a huge amount and how he uses RTI to find a way out of the problem.

Vilas Patil, Maharashtra chief information oficer, who handed over the awards to them, said, “When people hear that I'm the Chief Information Officer, they ask me what that means. This reflects the amount of knowledge the man on the street has about RTI.

Among many problems that we face with RTIs is that of frivolous questions we're swamped with. Also instead of putting the onus of RTI queries only on the press information officer, head of various departments also need to chip in to streamline the entire process."

City-based RTI activists Vivek Velankar and Jugal Rathi from Sagaj Nagrik Manch, the organisers of the awards were of the view that the provision of penalising officers who don't provide information under RTI need to be implemented in a better way in order to make the best of the Right to Information Act.

The Indian Express, 14 March, 2011, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/rti-400-govt-offices-in-district-but-no-pio-names/761874/


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