RTI Law: Implementation challenges ahead – Manteaw

Implementation of the Right to Information bill when passed into law will be challenging, Dr Steve Manteaw, Campaigns Coordinator for the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC), has said.

According to him, the manner information is kept, especially at the Ministries, Departments and Agencies, makes it difficult for persons who urgently need information to access it.

Parliament is currently debating the draft bill on the RTI, but Dr Manteaw fears that when passed, there will still be implementation challenges. Magnus Kofi Amoatey, Chair of the Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, told Class FM’s Ekow Annan on Wednesday May 18 that efforts were being taken to pass the bill.

Dr Manteaw, speaking in an interview with Prince Minkah, host of the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class 91.3 FM, Thursday May 19, said: “Sometimes, you may not be able to access a particular information not because the public office holder is unwilling to provide the information, but just because the manner in which the information has been kept makes it difficult to retrieve it,” adding: “Sometimes you go to the ministries, departments, and agencies, and to their storage facility you see tonnes and piles of records that have been kept in a dusty room and retrieving information from such a storage becomes difficult.”

He, therefore, advised that when the bill is passed, steps should be taken to ensure that “we have the right institutional back-up to enable the implementation of the law.”

For his part, Suleman Braimah, Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa, said there was the need to pass an RTI law that would meet best practices and would not promote secrecy.

“Countries like Ethiopia have passed a Right to Information law, but remain one of the most secretive and most repressive on the continent. Zimbabwe also passed an RTI [legislation] way back in 2000, and similarly other countries have passed them, but the restrictions and exemptions in them make those laws not different from what existed before their passage.”

Meanwhile, an ardent crusader for the passage of the RTI bill into law in Ghana, Akoto Ampaw, has observed that if the RTI bill is passed into law, it will transform the political culture in Ghana in terms of the relationship between the government and the citizens.

According to him, an RTI law will empower citizens to demand critical information from authorities since criminal charges may be levelled against institutions or anyone that fails to comply.

Citing an example to buttress his point, Mr Akoto Ampaw said Ghanaians could have leveraged the law, were it in force, to have demanded answers from the Ghana Water Company Limited concerning a recent publication in the newspapers that suggested a study conducted by the Water Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in 2009, showed the company’s treatment plants were incapable of removing algal toxins.