Four Labour Department officials have been slapped with penalties by Information Commissioner P. Vijaya Babu on charges ranging from ‘not furnishing information within the time specified’ and providing ‘misleading information’ under sub-section (1) of Section 20 of the Right To Information (RTI) Act, 2005.
The Commissioner told The Hindu that the maximum penalty of Rs. 25,000 had been imposed on Assistant Commissioner of Labour, Machilipatnam, for not furnishing information and for not attending hearings of the Commission. Deputy Commissioners of Labour based at Eluru and Nellore have been imposed penalty of Rs. 10,000 each for giving incorrect and misleading information to the commission.
The Guntur Joint Commissioner of Labour was imposed a penalty of Rs. 5,000 for not furnishing information within the stipulated time and for not attending the hearing of the Commission.
CompensationMr. Vijaya Babu said he had ordered five officials to pay compensation for causing “mental agony” and loss of livelihood to RTI petitioners by not providing information on time.
Senior citizens“Many of the petitioners are senior citizens and there are other petitioners who had to forgo a day’s wage to attend hearings. Officers who do not attending such hearings are bound to pay compensation to the petitioner,” Mr. Vijaya Babu said.
He said there were no files pending in his department. In all, 6,030 cases had been disposed of and 4,170 of them have even been uploaded into the State Information Commission website.