By Politico Writer
Deputy Minister of Information, Mamadi Gobeh-Kamara, has said in Freetown that President Julius Madda Bio is “fully committed to promoting and advancing press freedom, freedom of expression and access to information”.
In her keynote address at the launch of a roundtable discussion to commemorate this year’s International Day for Universal Access to Information at Family Kingdom Resort, the Deputy Minister said the president’s commitment to these democratic ideals would be “evidenced by the repeal of Part V of the Public Order Act of 1965”.
Madam Gobeh-Kamara described Access to Information as an “enabler of all seventeen (17) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) whether it is ending poverty in all its forms everywhere, ending hunger and achieving food security and food nutrition, ensuring healthy lives, equitable education and gender equality”.
Lawyer Emmanuel Saffa Abdulai, who heads the Society for Democratic Initiatives (SDI) that played a pioneering role in the decade-long campaign for the enactment of the law, called on his colleagues in the civil society coalition on Access to Information to re-organize in support of the RIA Commission. He also urged the Commission to quickly bring to parliament the necessary regulations to facilitate their work.
Earlier, chairman of the Commission, Dr. Ibrahim Seaga Shaw, spoke about the challenges he inherited on assuming office one year ago, including inadequate funding, a weak administrative structure and the lack of the necessary staff to carry out their work. He said, working with his team of regional commissioners and staff, they had made tremendous strides to address some of those challenges.
Participants at the session, drawn mostly from civil society groups and the media, questioned the level of political will on the part of the authorities and referenced the fact that only a few people from government ministries, departments and agencies attended the event. Some of them praised the effort, which they hoped would deepen the understanding of local communities on the RIA Act and train and deploy information officers in all government offices to facilitate the work of the commission.
They also called for a coordinated media campaign as part of the awareness raising efforts to create visibility of the Right to Access Information law that came into being in 2013.
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