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| Health dept passes wrong information about minister | | Govt disseminating manipulated information under RTI | |
EARLY TIMES REPORT
Jammu, Nov 2: State government has formulated many acts and policies to ensure transparency and accountability about its functioning and turning things simpler for the common masses in all spheres. However, these policies and acts seem to be on papers only.
To promote transparency and accountability in the working of public offices, one such act made by the Union government was Right to Information (RTI) Act which came into being in 2005. And in 2009 it was introduced in Jammu and Kashmir.
But the people at the helm of the affairs made a mockery of this act. There are many examples which shows the callous attitude of the authorities while disseminating the information sought under the act.
There are many such instances where the information seekers were denied of the exact information, when they applied for the same under RTI, in the concerned department.
In an RTI filed to the Department of Health Services shows the careless and sycophant approach. The applicant had asked for the service record of the Minister for Health, Sham Lal Sharma, who served in the state health Department.
In their official reply, the concerned authorities mentioned in Paragraph 1 that Sham Lal Sharma joined the health department on January 4, 1998 on the post of medical assistant but in a copy of his service book which was attached with the reply letter, it clearly mentioned that he resigned from his service on December 01, 1995. It is strange that how he could resign the service before joining.
Continuing disseminating wrong information in the reply, it was stated under Paragraph 2 that Sham Lal Sharma had never been placed under suspension and the question for constituting of inquiry committee does not arise.
When the applicant approached the department to get the clarification, Director Health Services Dr Ashok Sharma said `` I will issue the RTI after few days’’.
However, Official sources said that this RTI was against the Health Minister, so he needed to consult the concerned minister after that he would provide the same to the applicant. As he recently joined the post of Director Health Services.
This attitude of director showed that if the RTI is against the person on some
higher post, the concerned official needs to consult to take his/her permission and make the reply according to his/her wish.
On the condition of anonymity, a National Conference (NC) activist who was also served in health department along with the minister at that time said that there was a case against Sham Lal and he was suspended, after that he resigned from service. NC activist further said that at that time Dr Ved Parkash was the director health services.
When contacted former Director Health Services Dr Ved Parkash, who was director at that time, said something had happened at that time and also a committee was constituted, but he said he didn’t remember about the decision taken by the enquiry committee.
Same was the fate of RTI application filed by convener of Sangarsh RTI Movement, Balwinder Singh.
Balwinder Singh said seven months back he filed an RTI application to the Chief Engineer of Public Work Development, (PWD) seeking the report of 22 divisions of Jammu but in reply he got the report of only 4 divisions and the other report of 18 divisions was still pending.
``I also filed an appeal to Commissioner Secretary Works five months before but till date there was no reply,’’ Singh added. Similarly, in another RTI filed by the same, Balwinder Singh to the Department of Education, out of 10 Chief Education Officers only two CEOs from district Reasi and Samba gave their replies.
It is pertinent to mention here that the applicant has to deposit a fee of Rs 50 for getting any information under the RTI act in the state, moreover Rs 10 per page is also charged from the applicant for providing the same. The above instances clearly indicate the malafide intensions of the state government.
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