“Is new info bill not overkill?”

MP Steve Swart (ADCP) writes in the Sunday Times: “It’s crunch time in the long debate about a proposed Protection of (state) Information Bill”.

“Political parties and stakeholders have made their final submissions, and the parliamentary schedule allows the committee finalising the draft a month from when meetings resume after the local government elections to make the hard choices to determine the final form of the bill.

It would be a mistake to characterise the controversy surrounding the bill as a battle between the media and the government. In addition to freedom of expression (which includes press freedom), the average citizen’s right to access information will be severely curtailed if this bill is passed in its present form.

An example is the tragic death of 29 neonates at East London’s Cecilia Makiwane Hospital in March. As the bill now stands, the medical records and other information could be classified “confidential” by officials to hide negligence or other inconvenient truths.

This is not a far-fetched proposition. Eastern Cape health MEC Sicelo Gqobana himself expressed concern that hospital authorities had failed to report the deaths to him. If even an MEC was initially kept in the dark, would there not be a temptation in future to classify such records as “confidential”, thus denying public access to such information?

But do the provisions of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) not resolve this problem? It was passed to “foster a culture of transparency and accountability” and to “actively promote a society in which the people of South Africa have effective access to information to enable them to more fully exercise and protect all of their rights”.

These are noble intentions, considering SA’s past of secrecy, which often led to an abuse of power and human rights violations. There are, however, huge problems with the practical application of the PAIA.”

Keep reading at timeslive.co.za.