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Keeping information from the public

Mar 23, 2010 Editorial

Getting information about anything in the country is a very hard task. More often than not the custodians of the information are loath to speak. Sometimes they would direct the seeker of the information to a higher authority who would either be at constant meetings or who would simply refuse to divulge the information.
In the public service, the officers cite an order issued a long time ago when Desmond Hoyte was Minister of Finance barring anyone from leaking information considered sensitive. The order was quite clear. It suggested that the Permanent Secretary or any senior official should interface with people seeking information.
This order would be interpreted to mean that no one should talk about anything at all. The most mundane queries are forwarded to some other authority. This is common in almost every aspect of national life. In the police force the officers at the various police stations, even the head of the station, would forward queries to the Police Public Relations Department.
More recently, it would seem that any information out of the Ministry of Health has to be disseminated by the Minister. His knowledge is most amazing. He can speak about every aspect and quote figures. Earlier in the year he made bold predictions about HIV/AIDS and malaria.
He had said that the government had fought aggressively to combat HIV/AIDS. He even said that the introduction of the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission was responsible for a decline in AIDS which makes sense, but certainly not among the adult population. What that programme would do would be to reduce the number of babies being born with HIV/AIDS.
Through the President Emergency Plan for AIDS Reduction, there has been a massive education campaign, distribution of anti-retrovirals and monitoring of the infected who must stick to the regimen of medication.
What the Minister has not said is that the programme has gone a long way toward preventing an infected person from spreading the virus, hence the real reduction in the incidence of HIV.
The anti retroviral drugs help lower the CD4 count and the ability to transmit the virus. People with low CD4 count cannot transmit the virus.
Sometimes, though, the information is not accurate. Earlier in the year the Minister of Health announced that the incidence of malaria had declined over the previous year. It has since turned out that there has been no decline; that the number of reported cases was just as high if not higher.
There are other situations that need public attention but the information is simply not forthcoming. One newspaper seeking information on the guard service operating at President’s College was told that the information would never be forthcoming. And there is nothing that the newspaper could do. It has no legal option.
There have been queries about some of the contracts executed by the various agencies paid out of the public treasury. Again the information is not forthcoming. If the newspaper goes off half-cocked then the criticisms about deliberate distortion of facts or the peddling of untruths flow from the mouths and pens of the very people who refuse to divulge the information.
Sometimes there are lawsuits which are frivolous but are allowed to continue in Guyana because it suits the purpose of the authorities. The media house must pay money to defend a legal action that would never be continued with.
For years, there has been the move to have a Freedom of Information Act as a necessary part of national life. A Member of Parliament would not have had to go to Parliament to seek information of money paid to the advisers to President Bharrat Jagdeo.
People seeking information should have a forum to which they could apply. The forum must have the authority to compel the dissemination. Perhaps this is why the Act cannot be introduced; perhaps the official view is that the public must only know what it is told.

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