A total of 1,996 complaints were lodged with Information Commission (IC) under the Right to Information (RTI) Act in eight years since its inception in 2009 while 1,927 complaints were disposed of within this period.
The commission finned 27 RTI officers of different institutions under the act on the charges of not providing information to citizens, Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) Professor Golam Rahman told BSS here.
A total of 25,000 officials are currently engaged at different government and non-government offices and agencies to ensure the free flow of information, he added.
“Most of the laws are enacted to apply those on the country’s citizens. But RTI is such a law which is applied on the authority by the citizens,” Rahman said.
The citizens’ rights of getting information, which is recognized as an inseparable part of their constitutional rights, got a legal basis through the implantation of RTI Act-2009, he added.
Terming the implementation of the RTI Act a milestone for the countrymen, Professor Rahman said a total of 6,369 people applied for information in different government and non-government offices in 2016. Of them, 6,082 people got verified information, he added.
According to the commission sources, a total of 1,244 complaints were accepted by the commission for hearing since 2010. Of them 1,179 complaints were disposed of through hearing. Additional 615 complaints were disposed of by sending letters and 18 by giving directives to the respective responsible officials.
In addition, 83 complaints were disposed of through complainants’ individual hearing on the ground of acceptance of the complaints, 27 were dismissed for not following the appropriate process and 71 more are on the way to be disposed of, the sources added.
Since the formation of Information Commission, a total of 1,682 complaints were lodged with the commission, including 21 complaints in 2010, 83 in 2011, 202 in 2012, 207 in 2013, 294 in 2014, 336 in 2015 and 539 in 2016.
Of the total complainants in 2016, 71 percent was general citizens, 21 percent journalists, 6 percent service holders and 2 percent teachers.
Of them, 92 percent was male and 8 percent female, the commission sources said.
