Civil society organisations of Ganjam started a weeklong campaign for better implementation of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The campaign was organised in line with a Statewide campaign for efficient implementation of the law and fight corruption.
The RTI Act came to into effect during 2005 to bring transparency and accountability among the public agencies and elected representatives. But it has been seen that the implementation has been very poor in terms of providing information within stipulated time, denial of information, accuracy of information and pending of cases of RTI applicants with the Information Commission etc.
The citizens and civil society members expressed concern that if this continues a day will come when Government agencies, servants and elected representatives will undermine the spirit of the provision of transparency law. This definitely will reduce the accountability, harm on human rights and the poor and general public will suffer the most, they said.
On the occasion, various programmes were organized, including training of citizens, RTI camps to sensitize people, rally and campaign in schools and colleges.
Among the lead civil social organizations which joined included the Odisha Soochan Adhikar Abhiyan, the Coalition Against Corruption (CAC), the Manav Adhikar Surakshya Mancha and the Sansar etc.
Active citizens and civil society leaders like Guru Charan Patra, Saroj Pattanaik, Surya Narayan Behera, Abani Gaya, Kishore Chandra Patra, Maguni Nahak, Padma lochana Mahapatra, Bijaya Chandra Bishoyi, Ramesh Chandra Sahu, Harsha Samal,Y Siba Rao and Madhusudan Raut were present in the RTI camp held in front of the Sub Collector office in Brahmapur.