Hello SM,
Thank you for representing the Mauritius Internet Users during 'The Model Law on Access to Information' workshop.
> Mr Maxwell Kadiri, Legal Officer, Open Society Justice Initiative,
> gave a presentation about ATI Demystified. Ms Chantal Kisoon,
> Gauteng Provincial Manager, South African Human Rights Commission
> mentioned that there was a counter about the Freedom of Information
> Act on a news site in Mauritius. During the discussion session, Mr
> Ish Sookun from LSL Digital, commented about the number of days on
> the counter. Ms Sookun quoted the outgoing US ambassador saying that
> laws are not applied in Mauritius. The audience seemed to be in
> agreement with that comment.
>[snip] In her opinion, states has one
> pressing priority, which is economic.
Unfortunately, the fact that citizens are not requesting the Government for the 'Freedom of Information Act' might send the wrong message saying that they do not bother about such laws. This might be the reason why the State is focusing on other issues. Well, referring to recent events, asking the Government questions might turn out to be dangerous for the civilian herself/himself.
> [snip] She commented that a serious media presence helped in
> incentivising for a Freedom of Information law. She commented about
> changing the culture in the civil service; people are afraid to lose
> their jobs. The South African Human Rights Commission did auditing
> compliance to determine how many request were complied with. At the
> local government level, local government did hopelessly. One of the
> incentives for compliance was that the president changed the
> performance contracts of ministers. Ms Kisoon also stated that the
> culture of secrecy was inherited from the apartheid state.
We have the same problem in Mauritius, people are scared to voice out their opinion because they are scared to lose their job, families, freedom and so on. I hope it will be better.
> I asked what would be the output of the
> workshop. The answer was that there would be a report to MACOSS members.
Please share the report on the mailing list when you get it as I would like to read the report.
> The MACOSS shared the slides which were presented:
> http://www.elandsys.com/~sm/access-to-information-A VIEWFROMTHEINSIDE.pptx
> http://www.elandsys.com/~sm/access-to-information-GlobalandRegional.pptx
> http://www.elandsys.com/~sm/access-to-information-GlobalBestPractice.pptx
I cannot access the slides.
404 Not Found
The requested URL /~sm/access-to-information-A VIEWFROMTHEINSIDE.pptx was not found on this server.
The requested URL /~sm/access-to-information-GlobalandRegional.pptx was not found on this server.
The requested URL /~sm/access-to-information-GlobalBestPractice.pptx was not found on this server.
Kind regards,
Shelly
Received on Sat Feb 27 2016 - 15:15:50 PST