Kohima, February 28 (MExN): Nagaland Voluntary Consumers’ Organisation (NVCO) has conducted a study on the use of RTI and its impact in Nagaland in the last ten years since its implementation in the State in 2006. However, the organisation admitted that the study was not intensive.
According to a press release from Media Cell, NVCO, the study found out that several individuals and organisations were filing RTI application just for the sake of filing as they do not read and study the information obtained through the powerful Act. The awareness level in the district headquarters is still low, but is even lower in villages. NVCO maintained that basic knowledge of the RTI Act is required in the rural areas where more disclosure is needed in various schemes/ projects meant for villagers, especially those below poverty line (BPL). “We came across the maximum misuse of funds in MNREGA, Public Distribution System (PDS), etc. and therefore, the citizen must learn RTI so that transparency and accountability can be questioned by obtaining information through RTI,” NVCO stated.
The organisation also informed that certain village authorities had fined their citizens for filing RTI application without consulting village authorities. This is happening due to lack of awareness amongst the citizens,” it added.
NVCO also observed that maintenance of records or official documents by the government departments was much better with the implementation of the RTI Act in the State. “But when it comes to the level of corrupt practices especially in public sectors we did not see any improvement rather it is becoming worse.” The study also did not find much improvement in public infrastructural developmental works. Rather, it detected “so much of illegality in spending public funds in not following the norms and procedures including illegal deduction of certain percentages in the name of ‘commission’.”
During the study, NVCO also observed good number of success stories, the release said. On the other hand, there were cases of some applicants filing RTI just to extract money from public authorities, public authority attempting to bribe the applicant, using RTI to harass the public authorities or certain department, offering huge sum of hard cash to applicant where applicant refused, public authority manipulating public documents while furnishing to the applicants, NVCO said.
The release further said that the government had conducted several trainings for government employees, especially the PIOs and APIOs, but least bothered to take initiative to create awareness for the general public. “Still many PIOs and APIOs don’t encourage the applicants rather they still have negative attitude towards the RTI applicant or the RTI Activists and many of them take advantage of the one month period although the information can be furnished within a few days time,” it claimed.
Delay in furnishing the required information, the NVCO added, affects the applicants where he/she is seeking a stay order from the courts especially in the issue of awarding work order in contract works without following certain required norms.
The maximum RTI applications filed in various departments were related to recruitment of employees in public sector (backdoor appointments), contract works, among others, the release said.
The study was done through conducting awareness campaign, meeting and interview in the various district of Nagaland covering colleges, district administration, civil societies, public organisations, women organisations, churches, etc, following media reports on how other organisations were contributing in promoting the RTI Act in the State by filing RTI applications, fighting against the illegality and shortcoming of procedures based on information/ documents obtained through RTI. NVCO had even filed several cases such as Public Interest Litigation (PIL) before the Gauhati High Court, Kohima Bench and even to the apex Court in the country.
Meanwhile, the President of NVCO Kezhokhoto Savi has urged every citizen to participate in promoting RTI in their own capacity to achieve the objective of RTI Act.
