Govt clamps down on freedom of information: Trinidad and Tobago's Newsday
Govt clamps down on freedom of information: Trinidad and Tobago's Newsday
Monday, July 07, 2008
11:19 AM
Govt clamps down on freedom of information
By ANDRE BAGOO Sunday, July 6 2008
click on pic to zoom in
Kenneth Lalla SC...
EVERY YEAR, a list of scholarship winners for the ‘A’ Level examinations are released by the Ministry of Education and published in the press. The winners’ names, the subjects they studied, and the schools they attended are made public. Yet this week, as the names, scores and schools attended by the top 200 students in the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) were published in the press, the Government declined to tell us who had benefitted from $45million worth of scholarships from the Ministry of Community Development, Culture and Gender Affairs.
The Government’s trend of using the supposed letter of the law to block scrutiny of how it is spending taxpayers’ monies started on June 3 when Bridgid Annisette-George, the Attorney General, used the Constitution as well as the Freedom of Information Act in Parliament to support her decision to block inquires over how much money a private attorney had been paid for state briefs.
This week, that trend continued with Marlene McDonald, the Culture Minister, also citing the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, as she blocked a Parliamentary question that had been deferred for 18 weeks over just who had received scholarships, how much they got, which institutions they went on to study at, or for what purpose was the award given.
But can the Freedom of Information Act, an act that was passed explicitly to provide the public with information, be used to deny the public that very information?
Full article: <http://www.newsday.co.tt/news/0,82006.html>
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