Highlight, a year after RTI came into force in Ghana

General news for Sunday, January 3, 2021

Source: 3 News

2021-01-03

It had been a long struggle for the bill on the right to information to become law.

Incidents, lobbying, petitions, protests that sometimes turned violent were some of the activities that characterized the struggle for the approval of the law.

After almost 2 decades, the law was enacted and accentuated by President Akufo-Addo on May 21, 2019, but would only go into effect the following year, on January 2, 2020.

What that meant, according to Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, on January 8, 2020, was that any citizen could enter any public office and request information using a standardized form in accordance with Section 18 of the Right to Law Act. information. 2019, Law 989. But that was not the case in reality, as checks by MG’s news team in some government ministries, including the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in January, showed that they had no idea about approval. of the law and what it meant to them. There were no designated officials for this purpose or standardized forms for requesting information.

Later, the Information Ministry would assure the news team that they would address those issues.

In the following days, a series of questions would arise regarding the implementation of the RTI law that I capture in the following paragraphs as highlights:

1. The RTI law went into effect on January 2, 2020: The Ministry of Information, the implementing agency for the RTI announcement according to the ACT, that the law had entered into force and that citizens could request information from government ministries and agencies using standardized forms.

The Ministry simplified the request for acquisition contained in Law 989 for the public as follows;

2. Civil society expressed concern about the implementation of the RTI:

The RTI media coalition, which had been very instrumental in the fight for the approval of the law, felt marginalized in the implementation process.
The coalition leadership in an interview with Tv3 also raised issues regarding the absence of a board and IC to fully operationalize the ACT.

These concerns will persist for most of 2020 until a board is established 10 months later.

3. Ernest Henry Norgbey v. Election Commission:

The real test of the RTI came when Ashaiman MP Ernest Norgbey requested information from the Ghana Electoral Commission (EC). The EC rejected the request on the grounds that parliament had not prescribed fees under the Law on Fees and Charges for RTI. Aggravated by the EC’s position, the deputy filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court alleging a violation of his right to information under article 21 (1) (f). The court ruled in his favor and requested that he pay GHS 1500 for the requested information.

Four. MFWA vs. NCA: The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) under the RTI Act requested from the National Communications Authority (NCA) the list of all radio stations closed by the authority and other pieces of information. The NCA said it would only release the information after the MFWA has paid a GHS 2000 fee in accordance with the Electronic Communications Act. This, the MFWA was not taken lightly, describing the NCA measure as a hoax, deletion of the right and an act of bad faith.

5. The government explains why it took so long to establish a board for the RTI commission: after some pressure from civil society and the media coalition on the RTI on why the government failed to establish the RTI board after 7 months into its implementation, the government explained that it was later discovered that the initial candidates nominated for the board had not qualified for the position. The technical assistant and head of the Delivery Unit of the Office of the Minister of Information, Selasi Abode-Spencer, in a webinar for stakeholders, explained that the government did not initially know, for example, that the commission chair did not he had to hold a position for profit. . According to him, the government had to find other suitable candidates.

6. The IC ready to be presented to parliament: In the same webinar in which Selassie explained why the appointment of the RTI board members had been delayed, he revealed that the Constitutional Instrument (CI) for the full operation of the RTI law was ready to be presented to the parliament. The 7th Parliament of the 4th Republic was dissolved at midnight on January 6, 2021 and Ghanaians can only wait for some magic to be done to see that CI was placed and approved. Otherwise, we can only wait for the 8th Parliament which starts on January 7, 2021.

7. The appointment of the RTI board: President Akufo-Addo, on October 19, inaugurated the board of the RTI commission, 10 months after the law came into effect.

The seven-member board is chaired by Judge KA Ofori-Atta, Retired Superior Court Judge, Ms. Elizabeth Asare, Vice President; Yaw Sarpong Boateng, Executive Secretary, and Victoria Suswawu, the rest are Dr. Edith Dankwa, Nana Kwame Duah and Mr. David Oppon-Kusi.

Having entered the 2nd year of implementation of the RTI law, actions are expected to be accelerated to make up for all the time lost in previous years. The most important thing to anticipate will be the approval of the CI, as well as the publication of information manuals by all ministries and government agencies as required by law at the end of each year.