ATTC students sensitised to RTI law
A day’s sensitisation seminar on the Right to Information (RTI) Law for 150 students of Accra Technical Training College (ATTC) was held in Accra, Wednesday.
It was organised by the RTI office of the Ayawaso Central Municipal Assembly and meant to educate the students on their fundamental freedoms to access information in Article 21 (1) of the 1992 Constitution and Right to Information Act 2019, (Act 989).
Participants were taken through the RTI law, application process, and procedures to follow to access information, requirements of the applicant and the public institution, among others.
In a welcome address, Mr Terry Abray Abebrese, the Right to Information (RTI) Officer, said the RTI law was a sunshine Legislation designed to help citizens enjoy and protect their fundamental freedoms, makes institutions more transparent and accountable and encourage public participation in matters that concern them.
According to him, “we must be citizens and not spectators,” adding it was only by so doing that we can hold duty bearers accountable to their electoral promises.
Addressing the students as a guest speaker, a Deputy Chief Information Officer of the Access to Information Division, Information Services Department under the Ministry of Information, Mr Sosthenes Senanu Nyadroh, commended the students for their eagerness to bridge their knowledge gap on the law.
He said all persons must make a conscious effort to play their part effectively in the democratic process, adding that it was the basis for the passage of the information bill into law.
Mr Nyardroh said no public institution was exempted from providing an applicant with access to information, except that certain classes of information are exempted from release to the public which is expressly stated by the law, stressing that any public institution that refuses to grant an applicant access to information may be compelled by the RTI Commission to do so in accordance with the law.
According to him, however, there are exempt provisions that the law provides, adding that the law permits public institutions to do the classification depending on the information generated at the institution.
Mr Nyadroh indicated that the information generated by an institution must be published in the institution’s manual on a yearly basis and should be accessible to the public.
Being an election year, he said, the law would help the electorate make informed and relevant decisions, adding that it would help for fact-checking in the era of misinformation and disinformation.
He urged all citizens to be abreast of the law and duly make use of it to make meaningful contributions to the democratic prices
