Bureaucrats must inform the people: Khasru

Awami League MP Abdul Matin Khasru has asked the bureaucrats to change their mindset and stop stonewalling information from the people.

“You are servants of the republic. You don’t have the right to deny the rights of the people,” Khasru, Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Estimates, said at a discussion at bdnews24.com office on Saturday.

Bangladesh’s first internet newspaper co-hosted the discussion with the Information Commission marking the five years of its establishment.

Kaspersky Lab supported the event.

The Right to Information Ordinance was passed under the military-backed caretaker regime in Oct 2008.

After the Awami League government took office, it passed the Right to Information Act on March 29, 2009. The commission was formed on July 1.

Khasru, a former law minister, said people wanted information, but they did not know how to get it.

He advised bureaucrats “to work to make them (people) aware of it (how to get information)”.

Bureaucrats were public servants, he reminded them. “We’ll not let people know -- this type of mentality should be changed.”

bdnews24.com Editor-in-Chief Toufique Imrose Khalidi moderated the discussion.

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