Government to bear the RTI expenses of schools: SIC
28 Jan, 2013At present, the headmasters and headmistresses of government lower primary schools and upper primary schools in Kerala have to bear the expenses of replying to queries under the Right to Information (RTI) Act out of their own pockets as the application fee deposited by the applicant doesn’t usually reach the head teachers who are designated as state public information officers of their respective schools.
In a similar instance, an RTI query sought to get the copies of service books of class V teachers of a government school. As the fee deposited by the applicant in the treasury had not reached the headmistress, she had to spend Rs. 500 in order to reply to the query.
Now, the State Information Commission (SIC) of Kerala has asked the government to pay the mailing and stationery expenses of government lower and upper primary schools for replying to Right to Information (RTI) queries. It has asked the Director of Public Instructions to provide funds through the office expenditure head within a month.