Access to information

Sep 30, 2024 Letters

---

Dear Editor,

Knowledge is what we want. Schools are successful when they eventually show students how to acquire knowledge themselves. Knowledge is not merely information, though it is made up of information. It is not my intention to write a treatise on the processing and logics of turning information into knowledge by means of intelligence, but to remind citizens that civil society is characterized by upholding the right to know. Some of us use this criterion to help identify genuine civil society organisations (CSOs).

Some international CSOs got together in 2002 to uphold the Right to Know, and September 28 was allocated a day on which this was celebrated. The United Nations (UN) took it up and recommended treaties that would bind States to uphold the right to access information. Guyana signed one such treaty 6 years ago, the Escazú Agreement, which binds her and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to provide citizens with rights of “access to information about the environment, public participation in environmental decision-making, environmental justice, and a healthy and sustainable environment for current and future generations”. The exponential increase of information and its processing via artificial intelligence contributed to the UN declaring since last year that September 28 be celebrated as International Day for Universal Access to Information.

Governments in civilized countries are often the repositories of most of the information collected. Astronomical observations published in all inhabited continents thousands of years ago helped locate their respective agricultural seasons in time and led to some degree of predictability. Knowledge increases today because scientists have access to information. Since governments also spend money on behalf of citizens, they must be held accountable to citizens by transparent procedures and transactions. This means that information to do so must be accessible in a practical manner, without having to go through expensive, lengthy legal proceedings in the Courts to get it.

The Organisation of American States (OAS) urged the Guyana government, and an Access to Information Act was passed in 2011. For a while this effort pleased the OAS and Guyana had a good rating. However, the Act is a contortion of words and nice sounding phrases that was really designed to strangle access to information. Here is its declared purpose:

“AN ACT to provide for setting out a practical regime of right to information for persons to secure access to information under the control of public authorities in order to promote transparency and accountability in the working of the Government and public authorities and for the appointment of the Commissioner of Information.”

However, the true nature of the Act is revealed somewhere in the middle of its 42 pages where it allows, in S.13(2), the Public Authority, from which the information is to be had, to classify the records “in accordance with the security level required as top secret, secret, confidential, restricted or general and the information contained in all documents which are classified as general shall be accessible by the public in accordance with the provisions of this Act.” And if you think you can get the document that is classified as general, think again. The Public Authority might decide that it is not in the public interest to disclose the information. If you are not weary and still believe you ought to get the information, the Act provides for a Commissioner of Information to whom you can appeal.

Let me relate my experience. Three and a half years ago I asked the Ministry of Natural Resources (MoNR) for daily production and analysis of the oil and gas being produced offshore. I was never given that information. So, one and a half years ago I asked the Commissioner of Information, after learning of the procedure from him. He was very accommodating at the time, and acknowledged the request. But I still do not have the information and any further response from him. Here is what S.18 of the Act provides:

“18. (1) On receipt of a request, the Commissioner of Information shall acknowledge receipt of the request within thirty days from the date of its receipt and advise the applicant if the request is approved or denied within sixty days from the date the request is received.

(2) The Commissioner of Information may extend the period of sixty days for approval or denial and inform the applicant of the reasons therefor.

(3) Where the Commissioner of Information fails to give access within the time-limit, he shall be deemed to have refused to give access.”

Therefore, the Commissioner of Information is not even obligated to respond to me after 60 days. What kind of legislation is this that is full of procedures that get nowhere, exemptions that get nothing, and an official that can spend no time on a matter and get paid a salary most people could never get? Where are his annual reports to the National Assembly?

The primary official source of public information should be the Bureau of Statistics (BoS). However, the officers swear an oath of confidentiality to the Chief Statistician, who swears a similar oath to the Minister of Finance. This pre-Independence legacy of the British still governs the BoS. Their website has information, but not information that enables us to make the government accountable. A measure of their usefulness to the citizen is the non-publication of census figures. My visits and requests to them for oil and gas data only yielded empty promises. No one, not even the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could tell me in 1999 how much gold Omai Gold Mines Ltd was extracting. Only in my capacity as Head of the department of Chemistry at the University of Guyana was I able in 2001 to access the BoS data for annual chemical imports. Cyanide is used in known chemical proportion to gold, so its import data enabled me to estimate the astronomical amount of gold that was being produced while no profit was declared. Yet up to now, EPA and Ministries of Natural Resources are still unable to account for gold. There can be no excuse for the continuance of this ignorance.

Mr. Burnham had a Latin aphorism he used when going back to basics. Let me use it on his regime-perpetuating method. Rigging of elections is the fons et origo, the foundation and origin, of denial of access to information. Years after the 2020 election we are still denied access to the PNC Statements of Poll. The PPP is responsible for the useless Access to Information Act and for allowing the oil companies to get away with not allowing us to check their meters. Parties with this kind of mentality will suffer no information to be given out which they imagine could cause them to become accountable. Whenever citizens detect inconsistencies in the operations of publicly funded agencies and write about it, paid regime apologists and salaried personnel of these agencies write to deny, but usually give no data.

Without necessary information we will be unable to order it into useful knowledge, and school it into wisdom. Talented and hardworking citizens will migrate where they are adequately rewarded and the number of unruly people hustling for a living by any means will increase.

Sincerely
Alfred Bhulai  

---

• citizens, Commissioner, Guyana, organisations, Transparency

---