Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ranked as the Pakistani province with the best overall right to information act and response performance, with a score of 73% in a study conducted by PILDAT, the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency.
Punjab was second with a score of 65% and Balochistan third with a score of 29%. The 2002 Freedom of Information Ordinance and the federal government’s performance ranked fourth, with an overall score of 26%. Sindh was rated lowest with a score of only 24%. See reports on the study in The Daily Times, The News and The Tribune.
The results were announced at an event in Islamabad at which parliamentarians from opposition parties urged the federal government to immediately introduce an RTI Bill in Parliament. The bill has been pending with the Cabinet for last two years.
Punjab ranked first for its legal framework, but KP was first on implementation, and overall.
The report says national and provincial policymakers “must consider dedicating more resources for monitoring and evaluation of implementation of RTI/FOI. This is primarily because none of the administrative units assessed here was able to provide data on implementation of RTI/FOI within the prescribed timeframe for processing of information requests.”
The federal government was by far the worst of the jurisdictions in answering PILDAT’s requests for information.
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