Even info minister doesn’t have access to information

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is a country where even the information minister doesn’t have access to information of his own ministry.

Senator Pervaiz Rashid, the Minister for Information, opened his heart to journalists on Monday describing how his curiosity to know the beneficiaries of secret funds was dealt with the denial of access to information.

The outcome, the minister said, was not different when he tried to facilitate an RTI requester in 2015 seeking details of the lawyers hired by the federal government and the fees paid to them from the law ministry, then headed by him.

Addressing a ceremony organised by the Coalition of Right to Information for giving RTI Champions Awards 2016, the minister also reiterated his commitment for tabling before the federal cabinet the draft RTI law that’s aimed at replacing a weak Freedom of Information Ordinance 2002.

When that will be tabled before the cabinet is what he stopped short of promising this time after failing to keep his pledge more than nine occasions in the past.  The minister’s reassurance and resolve on the bill came in his speech after Senator Farhatullah Babar pronounced his frustration through an ultimatum.

The law, drafted by the Senate’s Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting, will be laid in the next session of the Upper House as a private members bill signed by all the opposition parties, he warned. 

“I can’t understand that why a promise repeatedly made before the Senate Standing Committee (on Information and Broadcasting) by the minister and reiterated in parliament isn’t being honored,” Babar said in his address to this award-giving ceremony at the National Press Club.

Azaz Syed of Geo TV and Sirmed Ali received the RTI Champion Awards by the Coalition of Right to Information coordinated by Zahid Abdullah who has long been working for the promotion and practice of this right from the platform of the Center for Peace and Development Initiatives.

As the award winners spoke about the problems they faced in securing the requested information, Senator Pervaiz Rashid, blamed the bureaucracy for denying public their right to know.

“Like journalists, civilian governments don’t have access to the information either,” the minister claimed that he further elaborated through examples. He said he wanted to know about the beneficiaries of the secret funds, details already sought by the Supreme Court.

Despite repeated efforts and the warnings, I received the information that was good for nothing, he said. “As I started reading the documents provided, I couldn’t find the clue who and how the secret fund was used.”  

The minister who also held the portfolio of law, justice and parliamentary affairs division, further explained his efforts in vain to help out this correspondent in getting details of the lawyers and the fee paid to them sought through an RTI request.  

However, what he failed to mention is the lack of democratisation in the access to information that reflects through discrimination in the treatment made between the lawmakers and the common citizens.

Any question sent by a lawmaker through Parliament is immediately answered by the concerned department fearing reprisal in the event of denial. Even if the same question is asked by a journalist or a citizen, it goes unanswered by the respective department.

This correspondent filed RTI requests, repeating the questions already answered to the Parliament, that failed to get replies on the ground that the information is not ‘public.’

Federal Public Service Commission, for instance, had submitted a list before the National Assembly in 2009 giving details of each candidate who had appeared in the CSS examinations along with his domicile and status of the result.

The question was then asked by PML-N MNA Baligh-ur-Rehman. When this correspondent repeated that question in 2014, the information was denied on the grounds that FPSC didn’t maintain such details.

The privatization commission was not forthcoming either. The PPP Senator Saeed Ghani asked in 2011 about the post-privatization mechanism to monitor the implementation status of the privatized entities.

He was told that no such mechanism existed, to begin with. When inquired by this correspondent in 2015, the commission refused information on the grounds that this was not for sharing with the public.

Speaking about the culture of secrecy, Senator Farhatullah Babar said that nobody wanted to share the information including the media houses as they refused giving exact details of their circulation statistics when inquired by the Parliament. “But the worst example in this regard is the security establishment,” he said.

Senator Babar also deplored the non-seriousness of the government in tabling the RTI bill drafted by the Senate Sub-Committee on Information and Broadcasting, headed by him.

The information minister promised seventeen months ago, Babar said, that the bill will be passed from the cabinet as a government bill and that is still being awaited.

Instead of sending there, another committee was formed to reconsider this bill. What amendments are being made is beyond our information; he said and disclosed that the same bill will now be tabled by the opposition parties as a private members bill in the next session.