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RTI turns four, but is not a strong tool yet

The survey found that only 13% of the rural population and 33% of the urban population was aware of the RTI act’s existence.

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Four years have passed since the UPA government enacted the Right to Information (RTI) Act, but implementation of the landmark legislation has been heavily flawed, a survey has found.

The survey found that only 13% of the rural population and 33% of the urban population was aware of the RTI act’s existence.

It was commissioned by the Centre’s Department of Personnel and Training (DOPT) and conducted by consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. It took feedback from over 2,000 information seekers and 200 information providers, and studied the act’s level of awareness among 5,000 citizens.

“The awareness level of citizens regarding their rights as an appellant under RTI is minimal,” said SK Sarkar, joint secretary, DOPT, at the annual convention of the Central Information Commission (CIC).

The survey report says: “Over 75% of information seekers were dissatisfied with the quality of information provided [under the act]… 26% of citizens had to pay more than three visits to submit applications and 47% said there were no signboards to help them with the process.”

The behaviour of public information officers (PIO) is an area of grave concern, Sarkar said. “There have been several instances when PIOs have discouraged people from filing RTI applications. Nearly 59% of applicants have complained about discourteous PIOs.

“While the attitude of PIOs needs to be changed, drastic steps towards capacity building also need to be taken… a significant number of PIOs have claimed that they have not been provided adequate training to deal with RTI applications.”

Another survey, conducted by the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI), shows the severe lack of financial and infrastructure support for the information commissions.

“While 50% of the information commissions stated that the budgets allocated to them were inadequate, 85% complained of inadequate staff. Additionally, nearly 60% of the commissions did not have what they considered to be adequate infrastructure,” said NCPRI’s Shekar Singh.
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