The Director of the Africa Office of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) Wilhelmina Mensah has urged public institutions to be proactive when it comes to providing the citizenry with information.

According to her, despite the passing of the Right to Information Law (RTI law) public institutions are still reluctant to hand over even basic information to the public, thus making access to information a struggle for the citizenry.

She said, “The default position of Access to Information is that information should be proactively disclosed. The fact that you have to request shouldn’t be what the position is.

“Unfortunately, in our part of the world, public officials think that they do not owe information to the citizenry and it’s like it’s a favour that is being done to you; without remembering that the information that is churned out from public offices is paid from the public purse to which all of us contribute to.”

The CHRI Director said if these public institutions were giving out information as they are supposed to, there would be no need for anybody to go and request for information.

Wilhemina Mensah bemoaned the use of the Oaths of secrecy by some public institutions to deny the general public access to basic information.

She said, “Unfortunately, because of the way our systems are structured, and because of the oaths of secrecy that people sign because of that, they use that as an excuse. You go to request for basic information and the default position is ‘why do you want it?’ ‘You need to prove that you’re not going to use it against the state,’ all sorts of questions that do not really satisfy the requirement of the law. “

Wilhemina Mensah made these comments in the 7^th National ARAP Dialogue broadcast on JoyNews on the theme, ‘Right to Information’.

According to the Director, though the RTI law meets International standards, the executors of the law are the same ones creating obstacles for the smooth implementation and functioning of the law.

“So yes, you can say that the law as structured although based on international standards that particular clause is not too bad. It’s more to do with the human elements, the implementation part of it because there is the spirit and the letter of every law and unfortunately, public officials are not looking at the spirit of the law.” She said.

Wilhemina Mensah added, “And so by default, it's extremely difficult even with the passage of an RTI law to get information out of people especially when the implementation is shrouded in secrecy, there’s not much information available on how it is being implemented.”

She further called on government to actively involve the citizenry and Civil Society Organisations in committees being set up to ensure the smooth implementation of the law.