{"id":18644,"date":"2016-06-23T15:24:50","date_gmt":"2016-06-23T19:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/?p=18644"},"modified":"2016-08-29T14:34:58","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T18:34:58","slug":"tanzanian-government-offers-modified-rti-legislation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/2016\/06\/tanzanian-government-offers-modified-rti-legislation\/","title":{"rendered":"Tanzanian Government Offers Modified RTI Legislation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Tanzanian government has produced a new right to information bill, posted on Parliament\u2019s website <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/THE-ACCESS-TO-INFORMATION-ACT-2016.pdf\">(text)<\/a>\u00a0and offered on first reading June 23.<\/p>\n<p>The bill is signed by Harrison Mwakyembe, Minister of Constitutional and Legal Affairs, and dated May 10. Activists tweeted about the new version, but there does not appear to have been news coverage of it.<\/p>\n<p>One controversial clause in a previous version, which appeared to ban the “public use” of information has been modified, but now would prohibit the distortion of information.<\/p>\n<p>Creation of the legislation has been much delayed. (See March FreedomInfo.org <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/2016\/03\/will-rti-ever-be-promulgated-in-tanzania\/\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a> by Deus Kibamba and June 2015 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/2015\/06\/delayed-consideration-urged-for-tanzanian-foi-legislation\/\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a> when the bill was put on hold in the face of opposition. The previous version, from February 2015, received a poor RTI Rating, according to a FreedomInfo.org <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/2015\/04\/tanzanian-rti-bill-rated-as-rather-mediocre-by-mendel\/\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>“It came as a surprise to most observers,” commented one official of a nongovernmental organization, speculating that the timetable may well be related to the OGP, as the second action plan period comes to an end at the end of this month. \u00a0He called it “a\u00a0slightly better bill than before, but still with very significant problems.”<\/p>\n<p><strong>Public Interest Exemption<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The bill contains a fairly typical array of exemptions (national security, privacy, commercial interests), but also permits an \u201cinformation holder\u201d to withhold information if \u201cthe disclosure is not justified in the public interest.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The deliberative process exemption permits the withholding is information if disclosure would \u201csignificantly undermine the information\u00a0holder\u2019s ability to give adequate and judicious\u00a0consideration to a matter of which no final\u00a0decision has been taken and which remains the\u00a0subject of active consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The bill contains a stiff penalty for unapproved disclosures. \u201cAny person who discloses exempt information withheld by the public authority in contravention of this Act, commits an offence and shall, on conviction, be liable to imprisonment for a term not less than fifteen years but not exceeding twenty years.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Prohibition on Distorting Information<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A minimum penalty of five years would apply to a recipient of information who distorts the information. The bill says \u201ca person who receives the information from the information holder shall not distort such information.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This appears to be a softer version of the controversial Section 18 of the February 2015 version which said, \u201c Information obtained by a person requesting from the\u00a0information holder shall not be for public use.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The time frames for handling of requests is supplemented by a clause providing more latitude to the government:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The information holder may defer the provision of access to information until the happening of a particular event, including the taking of some action required by law or some administrative action, or until the expiration of a specified time, where it is reasonable to do so in the public interest or having regard to normal and proper administrative practices.<\/p>\n<p>There appears to be no recourse to the courts or to an information commission to appeal denials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Tanzanian government has produced a new right to information bill, posted on Parliament\u2019s website (text)\u00a0and offered on first reading June 23. The bill is signed by Harrison Mwakyembe, Minister of Constitutional and Legal Affairs, and dated May 10. Activists tweeted about the new version, but there does not appear to have been news coverage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[494],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4E8o3-4QI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18644"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18644"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18881,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18644\/revisions\/18881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}