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?Official Secrets Act thwarts Freedom of Information law? |
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Daily Times
ISLAMABAD: Parliamentarians and civil society representatives on Friday deplored legal lacunae in the Freedom of Information (FOI) Ordinance and urged the government to improve and implement it across the board. The ordinance does not, for example, override the Official Secrets Act.
Participants at the workshop on ?Freedom of Information and People?s Right to Know? urged the government to improve the freedom of information law so that the public could safeguard its rights and interests free of bureaucratic hassles. The Network for Consumer Protection organised the workshop.
Senator Farhattullah Babar said the FOI law suffered from at least four basic defects, the foremost being that it did not override existing laws that could be used to deny information to citizens. One such law was the Official Secrets Act, under which government servants could label any document classified and hide public information. ?People must have the right to access not only final outcomes but also minutes of meetings to know how decisions were arrived at,? Senator Babar said.
MNA Sherry Rehman, who moved the private FOI bill, said that the freedom of information was a serious consumer rights issue. Reports relating to public welfare were gathering dust and the existing law did not provide easy access of these documents to citizens.
Mazhar Siraj, research fellow of the Consumer Rights Commission of Pakistan, said that deficiencies in the FOI Ordinance 2002 made it costly, cumbersome and time-consuming for citizens to access public information. The FOI law was limited to federal bodies and did not extend to the provinces, although there were several FOI provisions at the district level under the new devolution plan, he said. He said the FOI Ordinance should be implemented at the federal, provincial and district levels.staff report |
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