KP admin dept directed to public record regarding allotment of houses to govt employee
Peshawar : The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Right to Information Commission (RTIC) has directed the provincial administration department to proactively disclose information about the allotment of official accommodations to government employees.
The official record was sought by citizens from the KP administration department but the concerned officer didn’t entertain citizens’ requests for information under the RTI law.
The Commission also directed the PIO to provide all such data within three working days and disclose information proactively on the department official website in order to ensure public access to information without any hindrance.
The RTIC also decided to issue show-cause to the designated Public Information Officer (PIO) of the department for not furnishing information in one such case and said that persistent denial of information hinted at serious irregularities in the allotment of official residences to the government employees.
The Commission had received a total number of 10 cases against the KP administration department amongst which six are of allotment cases besides queries regarding ministers’ salaries, POL, repair of vehicles, helicopter repairs etc.
In all other cases record has swiftly been provided to the complainant(s) except for the allotment of the official accommodations.
As per details, a complainant had filed a request to the PIO of the administration department to provide him the data regarding the allotment of official accommodation of the government servants.
The Department has withheld the provision of the said information on the pretext of third party involvement which they believe couldn’t not be provided to the citizens under the KP RTI Act.
During the proceedings, the Commission took strong exception to the plea taken by the PIO of the administration department attending the proceedings and observed that record of the allotment of the official accommodations, including waiting list, merit list, on-turn and out-of-turn allotment, expenditures on these accommodations don’t fall in category of the third party information as provided in KP RTI Act.
It is rather Section 5 content which per the provision of the RTI law must be mandatorily disclosed.
