Bangalore: The power of information has yet not trickled down to the people in the State. And the main culprit is lack of awareness.

Although officials claim that the State is in the forefront in implementing the Right To Information (RTI) Act, activists say that the manner in which information regarding the Act is being imparted to officials and the public leaves much to be desired.

"The RTI Act places emphasis on imparting training to officials and the public, especially the poor and the marginalised," said Cyriac Joseph, trustee of Sakshi Trust, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) involved in spreading the message about RTI. Until recently, the State Government had not even published the Act in Kannada, he said.

Mass programmes

The State Government had not held any mass programmes to create awareness among the public about the RTI Act. In some instances, people did not know what to ask. Instead, they complain and make suggestions, he said.

As a result of the lack of initiative by the State Government, people in many districts of Karnataka were unaware of the empowering nature of the Act, Mr. Joseph said.

For example, in Belgaum, only about 15 requests for information under the RTI Act were filed in last year.

"It was only a few days ago that we had a regional level workshop on RTI for the first time and that too for officials," said RTI activist and Janapara Seva Samsthe secretary Ashok Halagali.

Government officials at taluk levels, who are duty-bound to provide information, are equally unaware of the Act.

State Information Commissioner K.A. Thippeswamy told The Hindu on Thursday that the Karnataka Information Commission had received many cases relating to denial of information by the officials.

Mr. Muralidharan cited an incident in which even six months after the Act was introduced, a journalist from Mandya asked police officials for information about Public Information Officers and Assistant Public Information Officers." The police said that they had no knowledge about the Act.

"In Mysore, one police station even said that they were exempted from the Act. Another official from North Karnataka did not even know he was a Public Information Officer," said Y.G. Muralidharan of Consumer Awareness and Education Trust (CREAT), who came across these facts at a training workshop conducted by his organisation.

Stating that the quality of training imparted to officials is very poor, he says that during training, only a copy of the Act is provided. "There are no explanations, case studies or guidelines," he said.

Besides, officials who had been asked to take training treated it as a punishment, Mr. Muralidharan says.

"While in Bangalore, there has been some amount of pressure from civil society. But it is absent in the districts," Mr. Joseph said. The situation is changing slowly, however, with NGOs taking up the message of RTI with some vigour.

"Until now, we predominantly had cases from urban areas. We are slowly getting cases from districts such as Raichur and Gulbarga," Mr. Thippeswamy said.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail