The sewa kendras set up by Punjab government in rural and urban areas are seeking an extra fee of Rs 200 for an RTI application as "facilitation charges".
The charge is being levied across the state at all sewa kendras even as the Right To Information (RTI) Act has prescribed a fee of Rs 10 for filing an application. The boards displayed outside sewa kendras, or service centres, mention the fee for various services. According to RTI activists, even though the facilitation fee is not illegal as it was cleared by the state government, the amount is too high. The fee for an RTI application is Rs 10, while the facilitation charges mentioned on the dispolay boards is Rs 200.
RTI activists protested outside a sewa kendra in Garhshankar town of Hoshiarpur on Wednesday , alleging that this was an attempt to discourage the use of RTI Act. "It is clearly against the spirit of the RTI Act, which prescribed a reasonable fee for procuring information.However, levying Rs 200 as facilitation charges will make its use prohibitive," said RTI activist Jai Gopal Dhiman, who covered his face with a black cloth to register his protest.
"When RTI Act clearly prescribes a fee, it is illegal to levy any additional costs and that too 20 times the original fee. Clearly, the intention is to discourage people from filing RTI applications," he said."There are several other services where facilitation charges are less," he said. It is learnt that infrastructure of the sewa kendras has been raised by the government and staff would be paid by a private company which has also arranged computers, printers and token machines. Official sources revealed that facilitation charges would be levied by the private company .
tally , establish ment of 2,147 sewa kendras in Punjab, out of which 1,758 are in rural areas, are being high lighted as a major step by the state government towards ensuring governance reforms in the state. "These centres would act as a catalyst to help people in getting their routine administrative works done in a speedy manner," chief minister Parkash Singh Badal had said while inaugurating the first such sewa kendra in Jalandhar on August 12.
"When most sewa kendras are in villages, RTI Act would be very expensive for rural folks," Dhiman said.State e-governance secretary Rakesh Verma said he would check the issue with the director, governance reforms department.
`Underprivileged sections will be hit'
Institute for Development and Communication (IDC) director Pramod Kumar, who had chaired the Punjab Governance Reforms Commission (PGRC) for ushering in governance and administrative reforms in the state, said the facilitation charges for the RTI applications sought by sewa kendras were on the higher side. "Higher facilitation charges will adversely affect the underprivileged sections seeking information through the RTI route in Punjab," he said.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): I P Singh
Quelle/Source: The Times of India, 20.10.2016
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