Access to info – step up and deliver, or scrap the Act

Nov 28, 2025 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – The PPPC Government has to make up its mind relative to providing Guyanese petitioners with access to vital information, in keeping with the provisions of the Access to Information Act now existing for over 14 years. There is the law and its provisions, which clearly states what can be requested, what should be released, and what could be denied. Yet, there is a line of Guyanese petitioners who have repeatedly written to the Office of the Commissioner of Information, some as long as several years ago, and getting nowhere. When they have been favored with a reply, it has been often condescending, and even derogatory, at times. It seems that there is no concern about mocking those requesting information, and disdaining what the access to information law affords them.

The PPPC Government has a few choices, one of which is to enlighten the Commissioner of Information that the duties of his office must be handled better. The best evidence of that would be to deliver the documents requested and long outstanding, or disapprove of such requests with the reasons clearly stated. Another choice available to the government is to replace the commissioner, if he proves to be intractable and unresponsive. If the job is proving too draining on his constitution, or too burdensome on his time, then the government should initiate the appropriate relief measures, of which there is only one. Send the Commissioner of Information home, which means that he doesn’t have to travel much of any distance, circumstances considered.

An office that holds such a crucial role, that receives an annual budgetary allocation of $40M is not properly served by someone peeking through the curtains, or finding new ways to stonewall delivery of information that Guyanese need. An option that is not presented casually is for the PPPC Government to stop the charade with access to information being the law and that information on how national business is managed (and readily available), when such is furthest from lived reality. Guyanese who have communicated to the Commissioner of Information’s office are available to share their negative experiences, and all of which casts that office and the law in the worst light. It may be an extreme step, but it is time to cease with the pretenses, and either produce requested information, or scrap the law and that office that has zero utility.

Why have a law when it is routinely made fun of, remade into the toy of a bureaucrat? Why continue with the farce of giving Guyanese hope, while sending them on what is nothing but ongoing wild goose chases? Why waste taxpayers’ dollars to pay the commissioner of information to engage in opaque verbal wizardries, with the result usually being little to no information of significance delivered? Could it be that he may have been given assurances from the highest government levels that his job is to hold the line, and not deliver? We don’t know, but given the experiences of Guyanese petitioners for information, few are the interpretations left to thinking citizens. In other words, the man in charge is simply following orders from his superiors.

Those same superiors made a commitment in their political manifesto of 2025 to enforce access to information provisions. That PPPC manifesto commitment is a backhanded way of acknowledging that the law has been ignored in the past, and that it is time for the games to be over. One PPPC Government leader admitted publicly that ‘something has to be done so that information is more easily accessed, and that changes are on the way.’ Political leaders have made big promises involving pivotal national issues in the past, only for their delivery record to be found woeful. One of the more baffling and unpardonable missteps of the current government was to turn its back on an InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights hearing relative to access to information. In what has become the norm in Guyana, top government officials say one thing in public, incorporate commitments in their manifestoes, and then carry on as usual by doing the opposite.

The Access to Information law enshrines much that can be beneficial to Guyanese. The PPPC Government has to deliver or repeal that law.

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Access to info, Act, Editorial, information, PPPC Government

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Access to info – step up and deliver, or scrap the Act

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