Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) and the Africa Office of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) have accused the country’s information ministry of lack of transparency concerning the implementation of the Right to Information (RTI) law.

Speaking at a virtual national dialogue organised by the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), the Director at the Africa Office of CHRI, Ms Wihelmina Mensah, noted that public officials felt reluctant in giving out vital information to the citizenry.

Officials of civil society organisations (CSOs) at the meeting, tagged ‘Right to Information, the dialogue sought to discuss Ghana’s progress in implementing the RTI law and its effectiveness in the country’s socio-political landscape’, took turns to express their thoughts.

Mensah added that CHRI organised some people to request information from some public institutions and a chunk of the feedback was that they were made to pledge not to use the information against the government.

The Executive Director at GII, Linda Ofori-Kwarfo, said that with Ghana’s pedigree in democracy, the government should ensure that information was made accessible to all.

‘As CSOs that contributed to the passing of the law, we should not be left out of the processes in implementing the law’, Ofori-kwarfo added.

On the part of the chairman of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee of Parliament, Ben Abdallah Bandah, he noted that it was not all information that could be put out for public consumption.

He said that the law obligated every public institution to put together a manual that contained the classes of information that they generate and process and also determine which information to give out to individuals.

Source: Modern Ghana