78% RTI officers have 'average awareness'

The Times Of India

28 Sep 2008, 0656 hrs IST,TNN

Bangalore: How aware are the men who handle Right To Information (RTI) applications?
An audit on the implementation of RTI Act, 2005 by a group of six college students, revealed how much the Public Information Officers (PIO) understood the Act, and highlighted the challenges they face.
An initiative of the Public Affairs Centre, the audit covered 41 agencies in Bangalore. These include those under central , state and local governments among other organizations . The survey focussed on evaluation of PIOs - their understanding and experiences - and organizations' compliance of suo motu provisions.
Only 10% of PIOs scored 'above average' on parameters associated with awareness about the Act. While 78% scored 'average' , 12% got 'below average' scores. Only 10% of the PIOs receive more than three applications a day and the local government agencies receive 108 per month - probably the highest among all.
As per law, penalities range from Rs 250 to 25,000 a day, but only 39% of the PIOs knew this and 22% had no answers. Questions on the implementation process revealed that 80% of PIOs maintain manual records. Only 10% have access to computers and there are a few with no records.

The officers also spoke about disablers like irrelevant applications, many driven by personal interest devoid of any public cause, need to provide information repetitive in nature , lack of proper archival systems and the inter and intra departmental delays.

Positives

On a positive note, 76% of them reported their performance was periodically reviewed . And 70% of those who attended the training sessions found it useful. Though 37% of PIOs reported that RTI affected their work negatively, 63% of them are 'quite satisfied' .

Disclosures

On the critical issue of suo motu disclosures, a website scrutiny conducted as part of this audit found that 44% of agencies scored high levels of compliance, even though the deadline for such disclosures expired a long time back. An onsite scrutiny revealed only 12% of agencies had a public display board stating the name and designation of the PIO.

State chief information commissioner K K Mishra said the study brought forth the deficiencies despite the small sample size, admitting the situation in the villages cannot be better. Besides setting up a separate RTI wing, the agencies should document the process with clear timelines. He also called for a simplification of the procedure followed to collect information.

REPORT CARD

Low Scorers (12%): Bangalore University , BWSSB (sub-divisional office ), IIM-B , KEONICS, State Bank of India High Scorers (10%): BMRC, commissioner of transport, Lok Ayukta , Somanahalli Gram Panchayat Only 39% officers know penalty amounts under the Act 80% of them maintain manual records. Some have no records Irrelevant applications, repetitive requests are disablers

RTI to unearth corruption in NREGS implementation in Katni MP

NREGA in Katni - Guaranteed Jobs or Guaranteed Corruption

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been in operation for almost 18 months now. From the initial 200 the job guarantee scheme has been extended to 130 more districts since April this year. Katni is one such beneficiary district in Madhya Pradesh.
While the dedicated website of NREGA (http://nrega.nic.in) contains stories of successful implementation in different parts of the country, for people living in the villages of Katni corruption and mismanagement are the only guarantee. Here is a sample:

· Mohari a resident of Matwar Padariya village worked for 4 days and was paid Rs. 260/- But the entry in his job card states that he worked for 6 days and was paid Rs. 400/-. Somebody had pocketed Rs. 140/-

· Mohari’s unlettered wife Pyaribai worked for 2 days but had not received a penny in wages until 14th July 2007 when activists of Suchana Adhikar Abhiyan visited the village. Somebody had pocketed the entire amount.

· Heerabai and Vidyabai - residents of the same village worked for 1 day each and paid Rs. 60/- But their job card contains an entry for 4 days of work and payment of Rs. 400/- per person. Somebody had pocketed Rs. 680/-.

· Yashodabai and Kamalesh also of Matwar Padariya approached the Sarpanch with a request for jobs but the Sarpanch sent them away claiming that no jobs were available and that they would be informed when jobs turned up. Somebody forgot to give them their unemployment allowance.

· Verification of job cards in the villages of Matwar Padariya, Ghangri Khurd, Ghangri Kala, Kailwara Kala and Badera in Katni district by Abhiyan activists revealed that the job cards did not have photographs pasted on them. Villagers claimed that they posed for photographs during the months of May-June.
Records obtained using the Right to Information Act showed that an NGO based in Katni had been awarded the contract through an open tender process for photographing villagers who applied for job cards. They were paid Rs. 3.50 for every photograph clicked. Somebody forgot to paste photographs on the job cards distributed in these villages. Somebody else forgot to cross-check whether the contract had been completed satisfactorily or not.

· In many cases the Sarpanch or the Secretary collected job cards from the villagers, made entries in the safety and comfort of their own homes and returned them to the unsuspecting owners. Somebody forgot to monitor the activities of the functionaries responsible for implementing NREGA at the village level.

· In Ghangri Khurd people who applied for jobs were asked to dig 70 sq ft of earth to earn Rs. 67/- the minimum wage payable under the NREGS. People worked for 1½ days and gave up as it was impossible even for the best of their able bodied men and women to meet the target. The soil was simply too hard.
They informed the Secretary of the Gram Panchayat in writing about their inability to continue work in that manner. The Secretary forwarded their petition to the Chief Executive Officer of the Janpad Panchayat (Block level Panchayat).
None of those who toiled for 1½ days has been paid till date. No action yet on their petition. Somebody forgot to pay these people their dues. Somebody forgot to take action on their petition in a timely manner.

· In 10 out of the 18 villages surveyed by Abhiyan activists in Katni district, work under NREGS began without anybody applying for jobs. The residents were simply asked to go to the work site by the Secretary or the Sarpanch and start work from a certain appointed date. Somebody forgot to educate the residents of these villages that they could formally apply for jobs and indicate the number of days that they wanted to work.

· Many families of Deora Khurd applied for job cards and posed for photographs as well. But their job cards were not handed over. Somebody forgot to distribute the job cards.

Thankfully for the residents of Deora Khurd when Abhiyan activists went visiting, they found someone who gave them a patient hearing and acted upon it. Within a day of the activists making enquiries the Sarpanch distributed more than 500 job cards – all done in two days flat (19th and 20th July).
Not everybody would be so lucky particularly where there are no civic minded citizens watching over implementation of this law meant to curb poverty and create community assets in rural areas.

Suchana Adhikar Abhiyan has been actively working for spreading awareness about RTI in the Vindhya Mahakoshal region of Madhya Pradesh for more than four years. Abhiyan activists started educating people about their rights and entitlements under NREGA soon after the State Government announced that the employment guarantee scheme would be extended to Katni. Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative held an advanced capacity building workshop in June for its core members. Activists were familiarised with the nitty gritty of NREGA. They developed a strategy for using RTI to obtain documents and verify implementation of the scheme at the ground level.

Five members of the Abhiyan- Dr. Rakesh Ranjan (Convenor), Vishwajeet Maity, Yogesh Pandey, Pramod Pandey and Deepak Srivastava launched a implementation verification campaign on 7th July. They videographed testimonies of people who claimed to have worked under the scheme; the state of their job cards and the entries they contained and the documents that they obtained by using the RTI Act.
They submitted a copy of the recording to the District Collector on 16th July based on a major portion of the data about corruption and mismanagement that they had collected. Even as they requested the district administration to conduct an investigation into the matter, the verification campaign continued in other villages.
When approached with proof of corruption the District Collector seemed surprised. Her surprise was not at the levels of corruption exposed but the fact that ‘NGOs’ were meddling in government affairs. She is reported to have told the Abhiyan activists that the RTI Act and NREGA were laws passed by the Government and that activists and NGOs did not have any role to play in its implementation after these laws had been passed!

Abhiyan activists persisted in their efforts. They sent copies of the recording and the petition to the Secretary Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj. The local media highlighted these instances of corruption.

When pressurised by mediapersons to react to the exposé, the District Collector is reported to have convened a meeting of officials on Sunday the 22nd and entrusted the matter to the Block Development Officer for investigation.

FIRs are likely to be filed against the Secretaries and Sarpanches of Matwar Padariya and Deora Khurd. Abhiyan activists believe that this is the tip of the proverbial iceberg and corruption would not be possible without collusion between the Panchayat functionaries and their seniors at the Block and District level. They plan to take this campaign to its logical conclusion to fix accountability of officers at the higher level as well.

Compiled by Venkatesh Nayak for CHRI, New Delhi

(Suchana Adhikar Abhiyan is a state-wide network of CSOs and activists involved in public education, advocacy and monitoring of the RTI Act in Madhya Pradesh. Sandhan-Katni is the secretariat of the Abhiyan and Dr. Rakesh Ranjan its Convenor. CHRI collaborates with the Abhiyan on RTI related issues.)

Two Bihar government officials fined under RTI Act

Outlook India, PATNA, MAY 20, 2008(PTI)

Bihar Information Commission (BIC) has fined two officials - one for not providing information sought under the Right to Information (RTI) Act and another for not providing information within stipulated time.
The BIC fined the Public Information Officer (PIO) of Motihari Collectorate Rs 25,000 as the PIO was found guitly of not not responding to the application of one Nagendra Jaiswal who had sought certain information from him, Commission sources said.
The BIC directed the East Champaran District Magistrate to ensure the compliance of the Commission's order and inform it accordingly, they said. The Commission asked the PIO to provide relevant information latest by July two and fixed July 10 as the next date of hearing in the case.
Chief Information Commissioner Justice Shashank Kumar Singh slapped a fine of Rs 12,500 on the chief engineer of the Patna Muncipal Corporation R P Trivedi for not not supplying information to Indrani Sinha within the stipulated period. The fine would be deducted from the June and July salary of the chief engineer, BIC sources added.

Now, hospital rights on RTI activist’s list

PALLAVI SINGH

The Indian Express
Posted online: Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 2310 hrs IST
New Delhi, May 14

Having propelled the public to invoke the Right to Information (RTI) Act for obtaining information on a variety of issues, social activist and Magsaysay awardee Arvind Kejriwal is taking his campaign for people’s rights to hospitals in the Capital.

From today onwards, volunteers from the Sunder Nagri branch of Kejriwal’s Parivartan will begin a campaign at the government-run Guru Tegh Bahadur (GTB) Hospital in Shahdara to identify lacunae in the distribution of medication to patients.

Their tool will be RTI applications once again. Parivartan volunteers will be filing these on behalf of patients denied medical facilities by the hospital.

“For quite some time now, our volunteers have been taking patients, repeatedly turned away by the hospital’s drug store without complete medication prescribed by doctors, to the hospital. Often, they were asked to get tests done from outside the hospital and in most cases, patients were denied medicines,” Kejriwal said.

He said he sought permission from the Delhi government to carry out an audit of the entire paper trail at the hospital. “The government turned down the offer but insisted there was no shortage of funds for hospitals,” Kejriwal said.
In a meeting between the hospital’s resident doctors’ association, medical superintendent and Health Secretary Vivek Rae earlier this month, the poor state of medical facilities at the hospital found special mention.
Earlier, in an audit conducted at the hospital, volunteers from Parivartan found the drug store didn’t have enough medical supplies for three months — a policy requirement for the hospital — and medical equipment for tests. “Patients were repeatedly being asked to get tests done from outside,” Kejriwal said.

While his organisation has already filed a few RTI applications with the hospital, volunteers from Parivartan would now be filing RTI applications for every patient, who is denied a full dose of medication and diagnostic tests.
“We are going to ask every patient in queue before the hospital pharmacy if he/she is being given medicines. If not, we’ll keep a record and file RTI applications. This will help us understand the shortcomings in the system,” he said.