Access to Information Act Needs Revision: IWA, AIJA

Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA) and Afghanistan Independent Journalists Associations (AIJA) welcomed the approval of Access to Information Act and asked the government to bring premature reforms in the law being issued by President Ghani on Sunday evening.

The aforementioned civil society organizations also asked the president to sign a legislative decree to bring fundamental changes they have identified in the seven articles of this law.

They warned if we cannot eliminate defects on the Law being approved, there will be no changes in media and journalists performances.

Chairman of IWA, Sayed Akram Afzali Said,” the law has a lot of problems which needs to be taken care of as soon as possible, the required reforms must be made in this Law.”

The organizations criticized the following articles and added that the Commission for implementation of the Access to Information Act is not independent based on this law, because most of the members of this committee will be assigned by governmental entities and decisions will be made based on voting system.

In addition, according to this law the reporters are supposed to buy informative materials like forms, pictures and etc from the governmental institutions and they will need to wait for ten days to access to information.

“National Interest” is not explained clearly in the Law and the governmental institutions may excuse ‘National Interest’ to prevent journalists from accessing to information, Rahimullah Samandar head of AIJA said.

Access to Information Act consist 32 articles and 6 chapters and it has been said that President Ghani has promised to revise and bring reforms in the Law.