The Right to Information Coalition in Ghana and others have criticized a draft RTI bill during ongoing regional consultations, and government officials have indicated some receptivity to alterations.
During an Aug. 5 session in Takorado, Paul Evans Aidoo, Western Regional Minister, said the government is determined to pass the bill and that there is a need to mobilize support for the bill, according to a report by the Ghana News Agency.
The listening sessions are being sponsored by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Constitution, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and Communications.
Aidoo also said people must not send out of the country a piece of information that could threaten national security and which could give economic advantage to the country’s competing neighbours, according to the GNA report.
At a meeting Aug. 8 in Accra, Twumasi Appiah, a member of Parliament for Sene, said the bill would make access to information more convenient and easy, ensure transparency in governance, and help in the fight against corruptions, according to an account in Modern Ghana.
Timelines Discussed
Various witnesses at the consultations, including Kwame Karikari, Executive Director of Media Foundation for West African, said the proposed time period for getting a request answered is too long, Modern Ghana reported.
Another report, in Coast Week, said that the chairman of the joint committee, Felix Twumasi-Appiah, conceded that some of the timelines were too long.
“We think that some of these periods are unduly excessive, and our committee will present these public concerns to parliament to reduce them to the barest minimum,” Twumasi-Appiah advocated, according to Coast Week.
The bill would allow 21 working days for a government officer to provide notice to applicant about a decision and 14 days within which to give access. But an extension of 21 working days at the discretion of the officer (Clause 26) and a minister may allow a three-month extension where the Minister so permits.
Responding to comments that the committee was deliberately dragging its feet to delay the passage of the bill, the chairman responded that the committee wanted to see that the bill became a law to stand the test of time. He said the committee wanted members of the public to make inputs into the bill so once it was passed, all Ghanaians could say “This is our bill, this is our law,” Coast Week reported.
Coalition Issues Statement
The concerns of the RTI Coalition were highlighted in a report on Ghana Web that cites the statement in full. The statement was signed by Caroline Nalule, Africa Regional Co-ordinator of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiatives; Nana Oye Lithur, Executive Director of Human Rights Advocacy Centre; Akoto Ampaw, Accra-based private legal practitioner; and Francis Ameyibor, an Accra-based media practitioner.
The coalition said all exemptions in the bill should be subjected to “a harms test,” that blanket exemptions be dropped, and that a public interest override be improved.
The coalition also recommended that applying the bill government agencies is too restrictive and excludes private bodies performing governmental functions and chieftaincy institutions. “The RTI law should also contain a provision which allows for access to information from a private body where the information may assist in the exercise or protection of any right,” according to the statement.
The coalition also addressed proposed fees, saying in part that “the requirement to pay an application fee for public information is absurd!”
An Information Commission should be created, the coalition said, citing the backlog in courts to which the bill would channel appeals and the benefits of having a body to promote and monitor the bill’s implementation. The coalition statement also discusses a variety of other topics.
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