Yaw Sarpong Boateng
The Executive Secretary of the Right to Information Commission (RTI), Yaw Sarpong, has attributed the delay in the ability of the commission to deliver on its mandate to the bureaucratic nature of most state institutions.
Mr. Sarpong made this known at a stakeholder conference in Accra under the theme: “Implementation of RTI Act 2019 (Act 989): Challenges, Solutions, Achievement and the way forward.”
“The Bureaucracy that we have encountered is one of the major causes of delay in discharging our duties as a commission. Whenever we receive a complaint as a matter of natural justice, we ought to hear two sides of the matter and therefore we will take steps to hear from the respondents in the complaint application based on the fact that we will hear two sides in other to be able to make a fair judgment on the matter.
“The commission writes to the institution and it takes about three weeks for the intended recipients of the letter to receive it. It passes through many stages before it gets to the recipients to respond to the letter, delaying our procedure in addressing such matters,” he stated.
Mr. Sarpong urged public institutions to establish an information unit in their various organisations as stated in the RTI Act 2019, to speed the processing of information.
Most institutions without information units turn out to serve applicants with false information. He said serving false information is a crime, and the person involved will face the necessary sanctions.
Sections 81 and 82 of the RTI law state that a person who delivers false information deliberately to an applicant is guilty of an offence, and if charged, faces imprisonment between six months to three years and a fine of between 250 to 500 penalty units.
BY Prince Fiifi Yorke