Community Awareness on the Right to Information Act (RTI) No 12 of 2016

Abstract

The communication is conveying information and ideas among the relevant persons. It is an essential component for all beings including humans. Information is the vital element for human for solving their problems. The human who is curious in nature suffers from thrust for the information, seeking and the use. Hence the information which have become a basic need of the man perform a major role in very many activities of the daily routine. In democracy, the right to information has been considered as a basic human need. As a result of this, the information access, transparency, responsibility have been major concentrations of any government and the delivery of genuine information and the participation of the community in obtaining and the use information are expected through this act. RTI Act no 12 of 2016 was established on 3rd of August 2016. The awareness and the usage of the act by authoritative institutions have been considered as a timely necessity. Therefore the main objective of this study was to examine the community awareness, operations of the Authorities, challenges faced by them. And finally to suggest the solutions to overcome the challenges. The primary data was collected through questionnaires, and interviews. The secondary data was collected through Internet, books, manuals, reports. As a whole, although the awareness on information act was in a satisfactory level, the usage was not satisfactory. Hence, the awareness programs should be conducted through schools, universities, libraries, press media and social media. Bothe human and physical resources should be enhanced to promote the dissemination of information within the given community