Speakers urge setting up commissions to ensure citizens right to information
- September 27, 2013, 6:07 pm
- National News
- 152 Views
ISLAMABAD, Sep 27 (APP): Speakers at a conference here on
Friday urged setting up a federal and provincial information
commissions with powers to ensure that government departments
disclose information proactively and make it available to citizens
on demand.
The conference entitled "Changing Right to Information
Legislative Landscape: the way forward for civil society groups and
political parties" was organized by Coalition on Right to
Information (CRTI).
CRTI coordinator, Zahid Abdullah shared that the coalition had
prepared 11 point charter of demand to protect and promote citizens
right to information.
He said one of the key demands of CRTI is that in the new
federal right to information laws, dispute resolution pertaining to
information requests and their denial by the public functionaries
should not be entrusted to federal ombudsman and provincial
ombudsman as presently in the case.
He further said, "We should be more serious to creating a
culture in which information flows freely. We will have to establish
independent federal and provincial information commissions, vesting
them with powers to ensure that government departments disclose
information proactively."
Mukhtar Ahmed Ali, founding director of CPDI appreciated
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government for establishing provincial
information commission under Right to Information Ordinance 2013 and
urged federal government and the provincial governments of
Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab to take leaf out of KP's right to
information legislation.
Shaukat Abbasi, Chairman Press Council of Pakistan said that
despite the commitment for enactment of right to information laws in
the charter of democracy signed up by PPP and PML-N and subsequent
public pledges by the political leaders to this effect, legislation
on this issue has not been carried out.
Natalia Tariq member of Open Security Forum presented paper
titled `The Instrumentality of Right to Information'.
He stressed that right to information has been instrumental in
helping citizens in achieving their basic rights.
