The Kerala State Right to Service Act(RTS) 2012, a legislation passed with much hype and widely perceived as the next step of Right to Information (RTI) Act,is yet to take off with most officials and the general public remaining clueless about its workings.
The government’s lethargy in providing training to the officials has added to the trouble.
“Unlike the RTI Act, which has an independent, apolitical and autonomous body called the ‘Information Commission’ to monitor its services, the RTS does not have an organisational structure for implementation. Hence it’s hard to put the Act into practice,” said D B Binu, General Secretary, Human Rights Defence Forum. There are around 60 government departments which have been brought under the purview of the Act.
“We had specially requested setting up a ‘Service Delivery Commission’ to head the RTS. But the clause has been completely removed by the government,”he said.
Chief Secretary E K Bharatbhushan declined to comment stating that he is not updated with the current status of RTS implementation. “I will inquire into it soon. But these are initial days and it takes time for any Act to be popular,” he said.
Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, Dinesh Sharma who was instrumental in implementing the Act, said that as per his knowledge, RTS has been successfully implemented.
According to the Act, various departments have to issue notifications and also display boards on the kind of service they provide and its time frame. As many as 99 per cent of the government departments are yet to display the notifications. Even though some departments have done the same, the notifications displayed by them are strange in nature.
“The notification of Collegiate Education Department talks about the stipulated time periods by which they will provide service on car loans, medical loans and the like for government officials. It conveniently eludes the services offered to the general public. They have issued a notification stating that they will provide all necessary services in a day,” pointed out D B Binu.