Syed Murad Ali Shah, 18 October 2019
Chief Minister Sindh
Dear Sir,
Appeal to resurrect dysfunctional and invisible
- Sindh Right to Information Commission and
- Sindh Public Safety and Police Complaints Commission
- You will appreciate that accountability and transparency are the two key pillars of democracy and good governance. Sadly, these two aspects have been hugely compromised by the absence, dysfunctionality and invisibility of the above mentioned Sindh Commissions, resulting in the Sindh government and police officials consistently failing to respond to the citizens’ requests for information and to the complaints made against the Sindh Police.
The Sindh Information Commission
- The Sindh Right to Information Act passed in March 2017 required an Information Commission to be in place within the first 100 days of the passage of the Act. Sadly, even today, two and a half years after the passage of this Act, there are no signs, no office, no address, no phone number, no e mail, no contact, no rules and no regulations relating to this important institution.
- We wrote to you to ensure an effective Information Commission for the province on Sept 20, 2017 and again on May 06, 2019. You even responded by giving some instructions to your Secretaries on 28 Sept 2017 to do the needful. ( Your letter is enclosed for reference.) However to this day, Sindh remains the only province that has a RTI law but no RTI Commission.
Sindh Public Safety and Police Complaints Commission
- The notification for Sindh Public Safety and Police Complaints Commission was issued on 11 September 2019 with 6 government nominated members of civil society and 7 political party members. This ratio ought to be the other way around if this Commission has to make any meaningful accountability of the police and the government.
However the critical issue at this juncture is that notwithstanding its credibility, the Commission is no where on the horizon and could well be declared as dead or missing.
- We as Citizens for Equal Rights, appeal to you to kindly resurrect these two dysfunctional Commissions and restore the constitutional rights of citizens granted by Article 19A of the Constitution and the Police Order 2002.
Sincerely,
Asad H. Kizilbash
For
Citizens for Equal Rights