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January 9, 2025The majority of government ministries are not complying with Pakistan’s Right to Information Act (RTI), according to the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN), in a report released on January 7. According to FAFEN, “this gap enables the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation”. Analysing the websites of forty divisions of thirty-three federal ministries, FAFEN found that,
“none of the assessed entities fully complied with the RTI Act, which mandates government bodies to proactively disclose public information online, in accordance with the principles of Article 19-A of the Constitution. Moreover, over one-third of the ministries did not respond to information requests as required by the law.”
After assessing these websites, FAFEN filed RTI requests with the federal ministries in question, and found that only 19 respond and that 14 ministries refused to do so. Of the ministries that did respond, only 9 responded within a stipulated 10 day period.
“only nine ministries (27%) provided the requested information within the stipulated 10 working days. However, 10 ministries (30%) provided the information after the legally-required timeframe. The remaining 14 ministries have yet to provide the requested information.”
FAFEN’s assessments took place between April and June 2024.
