{"id":410846,"date":"2018-03-19T08:43:42","date_gmt":"2018-03-19T08:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=410846"},"modified":"2018-03-19T14:03:52","modified_gmt":"2018-03-19T14:03:52","slug":"rti-bill-meaningless-without-covering-private-sector-prof-oquaye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2018\/03\/rti-bill-meaningless-without-covering-private-sector-prof-oquaye\/","title":{"rendered":"RTI Bill ‘meaningless’ without covering private sector- Prof. Oquaye"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Mike Oquaye, has said the Right to Information Bill will be more meaningful if it goes beyond dealing with the public sector to include the private sector.<\/p>\n
The Speaker says making access to information from the public sector mandatory through the passage of the Bill without including private businesses, will lead nowhere.<\/p>\n
In Prof. Oquaye’s view, state officials suspected to be corrupt usually have links to the private sector.<\/p>\n
“I was not happy, particularly with one aspect. That is, information can only be compelled from the public service, but that private businesses, foreign companies and others cannot be compelled. I said: but there is a symbiosis between corruption, corrupt officials and the businesses they do business with, and increase contracts by 10, 20, 30 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n
“I would suggest publicly that it must encompass everybody; the private sector, the public sector, the business promoters, the business consultants and those people who have some very interesting titles but who themselves are the real promoters of corrupt practices. For those persons, the Right to Information Bill must stretch to all of them before it can really be meaningful,\u201d Prof. Oquaye said.<\/p>\n
Background of RTI Bill<\/strong><\/p>\n The RTI Bill,which is expected to make information easily accessible by the media and Ghanaians to boost the fight against corruption, has been in legislation for well over 17 years now because successive governments have failed to implement it despite\u00a0several assurances<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Efforts by several advocacy groups to put pressure on the duty bearers to have the bill passed have also not yielded any positive results.<\/p>\n At his last address to Parliament, outgoing President\u00a0John Mahama begged Parliament<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to pass the bill at the last minute but his call was ignored.<\/p>\n Although the incumbent New Patriotic Party (NPP) government has promised to pass the bill, it is unclear how soon that would be.<\/p>\n