LAHORE: A number of departments, authorities and public bodies of Punjab government have failed to publish, submit and upload their annual reports of fiscal year (2018-19) for public information whereas the Punjab Information Commission (PIC) has sent its recommendations to take actions against these public bodies to the Punjab government, Pakistan Today learnt on Monday.
This scribe learnt that according to the Punjab Transparency and Right to Information Act 2013, “A public body shall publish in electronic form or otherwise an annual report of its activities under this Act during the previous financial year by 31 August each year in such manner as may be prescribed and make the report available for public inspection free of charge and for purchase at a reasonable cost”.
It is pertinent to mention here that the Punjab chief secretary had also issued a letter upon the PIC chief commissioner’s recommendation to implement the Punjab Transparency and Right to Information Act 2013, however, the letter states, “The Competent Authority has desired that Head of Department (HOD) of each Public body may immediately designate and notify a chief Public Information Officer (PIO) to liaise with PIC on behalf of the department concerned, ensure issuance of list of notified PIOs at least one for each administrative unit/office, arrange their regular trainings through PIC and to ensure provision of necessary facilities and support to PIOs to perform their duties efficiently and effectively. The chief secretary will address all chief PIOs in a seminar being arranged by PIC during the first week of March. The salient obligations of public bodies under the subject Act are as under ‘Proactive Disclosure of Public Information” (PIO) Section4 of Right to Information (RTI) Act 2013’, ‘Designation and Notification of PIOs, at least one for each administrative unit/office, to make RTI request forms available and facilitate filling thereof, to respond to requests forms and to maintain computerised and indexed data which can be electronically retrieved” Section 7 of RTI Act 2013’, ‘Establishment of RTI specific web-portal by each public body to carry out both forgoing obligations’ Section 6 (5) (g) of RTI Act 2013.”
The same letter further states, “It has further been desired that the statutory obligation of each public body under Section 9 of RTI Act 2013 to electronically publish its Annual Report, be complied with necessarily (proforma enclosed). It has been further desired that chief PIOs be designated and notified by HODs at the earliest and copies of such notifications along with copies of letters to PITB may be forwarded to Chief Information Commissioner Punjab up-till 15 February 2019 Chief PIOs so designated will ensure the issuance of detailed list of notified PIOs of all administrative units/offices of their respective departments with their necessary particulars latest by 28th February 2019,” letter concluded.
The sources in different departments of Punjab Government has also confirmed this scribe that most of the department are so negligence and even they don’t know about the awareness of RTI and they have not started to prepare the annual reports of their departments.
Sources added that the Punjab Police, Punjab education department, Punjab livestock and dairy development department, Punjab information and technology board, communication and works department, Punjab archaeology, Lahore development authority (LDA), excise taxation and narcotics control department and many other autonomous bodies and departments are still failed to even prepare their annual reports.
The chief commissioner of Punjab Information Commission, Mehboob Qadir Shah while speaking to Pakistan Today on the same issue said, “According to the Act it is the responsibility of every public body to submit their annual report for public information and the deadline of submission and uploading of the report is 31 August of every year. We had meetings with the other commissioners and other officials of different departments and given them directions to enforce the said Act. We have also sent our recommendations to Punjab government to take immediate actions against such public bodies who are still failed to meet the deadlines,” he concluded.
