90 percent cases are complaints about lack of response to RTI requests: iCOM

Information Commissioner's Office (iCOM) has revealed today that 90 percent of the complaints received by the office are concerning lack of response to Right to Information (RTI) requests submitted to various institutions.

Senior officials of iCOM were summoned to Parliament's Commitee on Independent Institutions today to be asked about the commission's work.

Information Commissioner Ahmed Ahid Rasheed said at the meeting that the office received an average of 35 cases per month in the first half of this year. He said that most of these cases concern a lack of response from institutions to RTI requests, or dissatisfaction with the responses received.

"90 percent of the cases are submitted due to not receiving any response from institutions to RTI requests," Ahid said, adding that this poses a burden on the workload of the commission as well.

Ahid said that the number of staff at iCOM had not increased since 2017. Although the number of cases being received by the commission has been increasing over the past ten years, they face challenges in looking into the cases submitted as the team has not grown in this duration.

While cases submitted to the commission needs to be concluded within 30 days, Ahid voiced concerns on the difficulties of reaching this target with all the cases with the low numbers of staff.

"We are working within immense challenges," Ahid said.

He said that the institutions also cite a variety of reasons to justify being unable to provide the requested information.

"Some institutions say that they, too, lack the facilities to provide answers within the determined window. This is a reason commonly brought up by institutions," he said.

Ahid revealed that so far this year, the commission has been investigating 258 cases, which includes 214 cases submitted this year, as well as 44 pending cases from last year. Out of this, 115 cases have been concluded.

As per the details shared by iCOM at the committee meeting, over 3000 RTI requests have been submitted to government institutions within this year.