Around 82% of information seekers applying under the Right to Information (RTI) Act 2009 do not receive a response from the government within the designated period of 20 working days, according to a RTI baseline survey in Bangladesh conducted by the Nielsen Company (Bangladesh) Ltd.
The information was revealed in the study, titled “Empowerment through Information: The Evolution of Transparency Regimes in South Asia,” which was released yesterday at a workshop in a city hotel.
The study and the two-day workshop on RTI laws in Southeast Asian countries have been jointly organised by Transparency Advisory Group (TAG) and Research Initiative Bangladesh (RIB), with the financial assistance of the World Bank. The workshop ends today.
As part of the study, RTI applications were filed with 82 government staff members from the upazila level to the ministry level in order to assess the functioning of the RTI Act in the country, as well as of the designated officers and others concerned.
According to the survey, only 17% of the applicants were responded to, but were asked about their reason for seeking information. Some of them were not given the full information, and some were instructed to contact the designated officers later.
Another point that emerged from these interviews was that people generally felt reluctant to seek information from the government – despite knowing that such information may resolve their problems – because they felt it was a time-consuming process.
However, after hearing about the RTI Act and learning that, under its provisions, designated officers are required to provide the requested information within a period of 20 days, people felt several problems related to employment, education, agriculture, etc could be resolved by using the RTI Act.
Bureaucratic hurdles were identified as a major obstacle by 17.4% of survey respondents, and the fear of being exposed was seen as some of the other major obstacles by 13.1%.
Nielsen also found that the RTI submission rate was very low, since 78.05% of the RTI designated officers said they had not received any RTI request for information yet.
According to the act, the designated officer must provide information sought by an applicant within 20 working days from the date of receiving the request.
Chief Information Commissioner of Bangladesh Mohammad Farooq presided over the ceremony which was attended by Cabinet Secretary Muhammad Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan as chief guest.
Dr Sahmsul Bari, chairman of the RIB and co-chair of TAG, gave the welcome speech, where he said a total of 61,420 RTI applications had been submitted to the designated government officers and relevant NGOs from 2010 to 2013.
“The number is very small for a country with over 150 million people. By comparison, four million RTI applications are submitted annually in India,” he said.
Addressing the government officers’ reluctance to provide requested information, the cabinet secretary said: “Implementation of the right to information was a commitment of the present government, and we are dedicated to it."
“But sometimes, government employees do not provide the information because they believe it may cause the government embarrassment, which may lead them to be held responsible by senior authorities," he added.
Farooq said: “The government has taken various steps to make people aware of the RTI Act.”
Shekhar Singh, co-chair of TAG, and Vikram K Chand, lead public sector specialist of the World Bank in New Delhi, among others, were also present at the ceremony.
