Tonga will hold public consultations in July and August on a freedom of information bill, Acting Prime Minister Hon. Samiu Vaipulu said April 22.
He was the keynote speaker at the opening of a three-day “Rights to Information in Tonga Workshop – Freedom of Information Policy Awareness.”
Freedom of Information is a tool towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals, he said, according to an article in MatangiTongaonline.
Vaipulu also said a government who is afraid of the media is a government that is afraid of its people – everyone has the right to information and this government has accepted these rights to information, according to the article.
“The workshop held by the Ministry of Information and Communications in partnership with the Secretariat of the Pacific Community’s -Regional Rights Resource Team (RRRT) who are conducting the training, attended by Government information officers, media, NGO’s and Civil Society at the Fa’onelua Convention Centre in Nuku’alofa,” the article said. One goal of the workshop was “to look at the government’s Freedom of Information Policy launched in June 2012,” the article said.
This process must be driven by Tongans for Tonga having regard the uniqueness of its constitution, cultural and legal traditions, according to Senior Trainer Graham Leung.
Tonga is a sovereign state and an archipelago comprising 176 islands scattered over 700,000 square kilometres (270,000 sq mi) of the southern Pacific Ocean with slightly more than 100,00 citizens.
Cook Islands is the only island country in the Pacific region that has a Freedom of Information Law.
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