Dhaka: Only 69,862 applications were submitted to various government and non-government offices since the enactment of the Right to Information (RTI) Act six years back, which the Information Commission itself says a very poor response compared to the country’s population.

‘This is evident that the country’s people haven’t been informed about the law and its provision. So, the main challenge to implement Right to Information act is to make people aware about it to inspire them to use it,’ the Commission says in its Annual Report 2014.

The law started its journey when the Right to Information Ordinance was promulgated on 20 October 2008. Later, the Right to Information Bill was passed in Parliament on 29 March 2009, making it a full-fledged law to empower the citizens by promoting transparency and accountability in the working of the public, autonomous and statutory organisations and other private organisations.

The Information Commission in its annual report identified 13 challenges to implement the Act.

The RTI Act says there will be a designated officer in every office –both government and non-government ones– to provide information.

But the report says, so far only 55 percent government offices have got assigned officers to provide information, while it is only 45 percent in non-government offices.

The report added that every ministry and its sub-ordinate directorates have introduced their own websites, but those are hardly updated. Besides, most ministries have published annual reports but most subordinate directorates didn’t publish annual reports.

Lack of interest among the designated officers to provide information, absence of proper facilities to preserve information, ambiguity and limitations in the RTI Act in some cases, inadequate fund allocations for government offices to gather and furnish information, complexities to identify appellate officials, lack of authorities’ drive to develop the culture of providing information are among the major challenges to implement the RTI Act, according to the annual report.

Lack of interest among journalists and media people to use the RTI act, lack of clear idea among assigned and appellate officials about the law, dependency on higher authority to provide information and lack of logistic support in the offices of the designated officer are the challenges the Commission facing in implementing the law.

In the report, the Commission made 14 recommendations to implement the law. It recommended having power to draw contempt of court proceedings against errant party to effectively implement the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

‘It's possible to implement the Right to Information (RTI) Act effectively by empowering the Commission to draw contempt of court proceedings against errant party and with other time-befitting and effective systems,’ the report said.

The Commission also recommended including indigenous and multi-national companies under the RTI act.

The other recommendations include to take applications and provide information through online, arrange videoconferences based hearing, same status for head and members of the Information Commission like that of heads and members of Anti Corruption Commission and National Human Rights Commission as the three commissions are statutory organisations, bring proper amendment to the laws which are contradictory with the RTI Act and inspire people to use the law through various programmes.

The number of applications seeking information using the prescribed format was 8442 across the country in 2014 and 8315 of them were submitted to government authorities and only 127 to non-government offices. Among the total applications, 7870 were entertained, while 542 left out and 30 under process to provide information, the report added.

In 2014, a total of 294 complaints were lodged with the Information Commission and 156 of them disposed of through hearings. Among the 294 complaints, 284 were against government offices and 10 against non-government offices.

The report said the various government authorities realised Tk 1280,226 for providing information under the RTI Act 2009.