MISA conducted its research on several key public institutions, among them the Zimbabwe United Passenger Company, Grain Marketing Board, Industrial Development Corporation, Zimbabwe Investment Authority, Zimbabwe Schools Examination Council and Research Council of Zimbabwe.
The main objective of the study was to establish the level of responsiveness on the part of these organisations to the need to provide relevant and useful information to the public. Sadly, MISA came to the conclusion that all these institutions had poor mechanisms or systems to ensure the availability of information for public consumption.
As the media institute says: “It would appear from the random sampling method employed in this research that the majority of institutions are still not very keen on disclosing or placing information in the public domain.”
Most of the institutions reviewed, says MISA, “can easily be qualified as being secretive”. The revelations from this study indicate a malignance in public institutions that we have lived with for a long time.
It is so difficult to access information from government departments, for a number of reasons, some of these being:
• A negative culture. Since independence, there has been a growing culture in which public employees have stark disregard for transparency and accountability.
• Corruption. One of the reasons why public institutions are reluctant to give information to the public is widespread corruption. Making information easily accessible would expose them.
• Bureaucracy and inefficiency. The failure to make accessible information is also attributable to plain inefficiency and too much red tape.
• Failure to adapt to modern information systems.
• Detrimental laws. A number of laws inherited from the colonial era or enacted since then undermine the effective dissemination of public information. They also make it difficult for those who seek the information to obtain it. These laws include the Official Secrets Act, Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, Public Order and Security Act as well as the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform Act).
Obviously, opaque communication systems and strategies in the public sector are detrimental to national development. A media that faces difficulties in accessing information cannot adequately inform policy-makers and decision-makers. Ordinary citizens become hamstrung in their quest to participate in national development and non-state players fail to make effective interventions, especially in times of crisis.
This situation must be redressed to ensure that public information is easily accessible. Perhaps the starting point is the new constitution, which should guarantee the right to access to public information by citizens and development stakeholders. The laws cited above would then have to be changed to comply with the constitution.
Post published in: Editor: Wilf Mbanga
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