Africa-Press – Namibia. ARLANA SHIKONGO and JOHN-COLIN NAMENE
THE passing of the access to information bill in the National Assembly earlier this week has sparked a push for regulations promoting blanket secrecy and the exclusion of Cabinet files and judiciary information to be lifted.
Access to Information in Namibia (Action) Coalition chairperson Frederico Links says revisiting secrecy regulations within the bill would be key in ensuring transparent access to information pertaining to the Cabinet, the judiciary, and any entities involved with them.
“Yes, Cabinet deliberations are sensitive. So you would rather put a certain time limit on it, like 10 or 20 years after an administration has left.
“In that way you can still have these documents available as historical documents on political [and] executive processes during a specific Presidency,” Links says.
Under the current draft of the bill certain entities are exempted from transparent supervision, which is inappropriate, he says.
“If an entity is doing business with the government or on behalf of the government, it should also fall under the purview of the law,” he says.
This comes into play as the bill heads to the National Council for review before eventually being signed into law by the president.
Links says it would be interesting to see how the National Council interacts with the committee report that made recommendations.
Namibia Media Trust (NMT) director Zoe Titus this week welcomed the passing of the bill, saying small gains must be celebrated.
She, however, highlighted the challenges of the bill in its current format if not amended.
“There is a potential challenge in the future that it is going to be a complicated process to get the information, that people would not be able to access the information in the format they require,” she said.
Titus said even though people may have better access to information, there are still many factors to consider.
“Keep in mind the law says people must get information in a language that is relevant to them. [Also] we do not have information officers in public institutions who can communicate with people with hearing impairments.
“The next thing is that record-keeping in general is very poor. People may seek information that is just not available,” she said.
Titus raised concerns about the lack of public knowledge on the contents of the bill, questioning whether there were any substantial changes that came from the deliberations in the parliamentary standing committee on information.
She said the bill may not be fully implemented, adding that the legislation is part of a broader group of other bills that need to be gazetted.
“For journalists and the work they do, they require an access to information law, supported by witness protection legislation and whistleblower legislation.
“The whistleblower legislation has been lying on the shelf since 2017. I really hope this is not the case with this subsequent law,” she said.
Media lecturer at the Namibian University of Science and Technology Phillip Santos says journalists have to come to the party and will play their part when the law is inked, adding it would have a huge impact on the media industry.
“For starters, it takes away speculation around issues where primary information would have been difficult. Where journalists would say they could not reach a source, one would expect them to have that latitude to get access to the information they need to write stories,” he says.
Santos makes special reference to how this would affect investigative journalists, noting it would boost their reporting considering they require access to complex information.
“The government and the private sector hold massive amounts of information that would be difficult for the ordinary person to process, but it would be available to investigative journalists to sift through for them to inform the public,” Santos says.
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