Business Ghana: Ghana: Friday, June 15, 2018.
The Right To
Information (RTI) Coalition has called on Parliament to take a critical look at
some of the provisions of the Right To Information Bill, which is currently
before the House, to make it more credible.
The group,
which has been championing the Right To Information campaign over the years,
has argued that there are “persisting flaws in the Bill” and, therefore, called
for the removal of some provisions from the proposed RTI Bill.
Reading a
statement on behalf of the coalition, the Director of Advocacy and Policy
Engagement at the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Dr Kwadwo
Asante, who is a member of the coalition, said: “it is imperative that the RTI
Bill being discussed in Parliament actually provides and actualises the right
to information not a denial of information.”
The coalition
explained that it made the observation following the laying of a report on the
RTI Bill before Parliament by the joint Parliamentary Committee on
Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, and Communications on May 23,
2018 and the subsequent second reading of the bill on June 7, 2018.
Although they
agreed that there had been positive amendments to the Bill in relation to the
work of the joint committee, they added that “unfortunately, in spite of these
positive moves by the joint committee, the bill currently contains provisions
that if not addressed by the house will render the entire exercise
meaningless.”
Clauses
Members of
the coalition said they were happy that the report laid before the full House
by the joint committee had proposed an amendment to reduce the application and receipt
of information time from 28 days to 14 days.
Also they
agreed that the requirement for an application fee should be scrapped and
limited to only prescribed fee for reproduction.
To make the
Bill credible, Dr Asante called for the deletion of a number of provisions
including clauses 12, 13, 85 and 92 as well as the deletion of some words in
some provisions.
Clause 12,
which stated that information obtained from a tax return or gathered for the
purpose of determining tax liability, was an exempt information.
Yet, the
coalition insist that exempting clause 12 defeats government’s objective on tax
governance and increasing domestic resource mobilisation which is a major
indicator of the Ghana beyond aid agenda.
Clause 13, in
parts, states that an information should be exempted from disclosure, if it
would reveal an opinion, an advice, a report, or a recommendation prepared or
recorded or a consultation or a deliberation held in the course of or for the
purpose of making a decision in the public service which can reasonably be
expected to frustrate or inhibit the candid and deliberative process of a
public institution.
“This
provision, if kept, fundamentally undermines the entirety of the Bill. Almost
all documents in the public service will become exempt information. If fact, if
you keep clause 13, you can delete all the public interests exemptions
currently in the Bill because they become redundant,” he said.
Office of
President
Clauses 85
and 92 which deal with primacy of the Act, according to the coalition, must be
deleted and replaced with a new clause as the current provision was inadequate
and must be addressed to avoid unnecessary litigation.
Parliament,
they said, must also defined ‘the Office
of the President’ under clause five which states that information is exempt if
prepared for the submission or submitted to the office of the President and
Vice President.
That was
because ‘‘there are so many offices under the Office of the President”.
They also
stated that the word prejudice in clause eight and nine must be deleted while
the word damage was kept.
On the
proposal of the joint parliamentary committee for an amendment of clause 18 to
require citizens to show an identification card when they applied for
information, the coalition opposed the idea saying people must not be
necessarily physically present to make a request for information as they could
rely on technology to do that.
Also on
clause 38, where the joint committee was
proposing that applicants could head to the Supreme Court if they were denied
access to information, the coalition said it was erroneous and suggested that
applicants should first resort to the information commission for redress and
then to the high court.
“Members of
Parliament should remember that they are citizens first and politicians second.
Passing a credible law that will facilitate the effective participation of citizens
in the affairs of state, facilitate the welfare of citizens and promote
transparency will inure to the benefit of all,” Dr Asante said.
Delay
The coalition
used the opportunity to launch a 36 days countdown to the passage of the Right
To Information Bill before the end of the current sitting of Parliament.
Launching the
countdown, the Chairman of the RTI coalition, Mr Seth?Aboloso, said the
coalition would be monitoring Parliament’s consideration of the Bill every step
of the way until subsequent presidential assent to the Law.
He said the
coalition would also be sensitising the public and also embark on outreach
programmes at the regional level in addition to media engagement programmes.
President
Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in his address on March 6 during the celebration
of Ghana’s 60th independence anniversary, served notice he would give impetus
to his fight against corruption by impressing on Parliament to pass the Right
to Information Bill (RTI) before it went on recess.
The RTI bill
was pioneered 22 years ago by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) which
came up with the first draft followed by governments review of the Bill in
2003, 2005 and 2007 until it was put before Parliament on February 5, 2010.