Use of Right to Information (RTI) Act: A Vehicle for People's Empowerment of Bangladesh

Right to Information (RTI) Act was enacted in 2009 for ensuring people’s right to know the information. By using this RTI Act, people can challenge the public and private officials to ensure their accountability and transparency. The aim of this study is to examine in what manner RTI is empowering people by using Right to Information (RTI) Act and to determine in what extent Information Commission is able to ensure people’s right to know. This is mixed method study that adopted face to face survey in quantitative method and case study in qualitative method. This study covered the different districts of Bangladesh with Dhaka City. Survey and case study method are conducted in Dhaka city area and telephone survey is conducted in outside of Dhaka in different districts of Bangladesh. The population of this thesis is the people who sought information in different institutions by using RTI Act. The total sample of this study is 150 and non-random purposive sampling is used to conduct this study. Right to Information (RTI) Act is a weapon for the common people to ensure their right to know. People are not satisfied with the role of Information Commission. Information Commission has some limitations in some instances and sometimes they become influenced by public officials and bureaucrats. The findings of this study are the both descriptive and numerical to realize the reality of the RTI Act. Though RTI Act is a vehicle for people’s empowerment, most of the people are not empowering by using this Act. They sought information but did not get their expected information because of some obstacles of DIO and Information Commission. Information Commission, however, is playing some roles to ensure the accountability, transparency and reducing of corruption, but it is not sufficient.