K-P assembly fails to provide information to its own secretary

Kifayatullah Afridi had submitted an application on August 29 under the Right to Information Act

PESHAWAR: In a bizarre move, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa assembly has apparently withheld information from its own additional secretary after he had filed an application under the K-P Right Information Act 2013.

Kifayatullah Afridi, an additional secretary at the K-P assembly had submitted an application on August 29, 2017, under the Right to Information Act  — passed by the assembly in 2013 — to the assembly’s public information officer seeking details about some appointments, posts which had been created and vacant posts in the assembly from August 1, 2015 till August 15, 2017.

“The assembly did not provide the information I sought and used delaying tactics,” Afridi told The Express Tribune, adding that the public information officer kept telling him on the phone that the file to process the information and documents has been ‘moved’.

After the 20 day period to provide information – as stipulated under the law - had passed, Afridi complained to the chief information commissioner of the RTI commission against the information officer. The commission, acting on Afridi’s complaint, wrote to the officer, directing him to provide the information within 10 days.

“After the complaint and the letter of the commission, the PIO called me and said that they were not providing the information under the RTI application as they thought I, being a senior official of the assembly, can get the information directly without the application,” a perplexed Afridi said.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 11^th, 2017.