The government needs to legislate a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act if it is to credibly back up its role in administering the country with transparency and openness, said a coalition of non-governmental organisations.

"The government has made important steps in releasing some documents and improving openness with (its) administration. It is time now to institutionalise these procedure," said Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ) executive director Sonia Randhawa.

"The public still face difficulties in obtaining information they need in making decisions or influencing public policies that would affect their lives," she added during the launch of the National Coalition for a Freedom of Information forum in Kuala Lumpur last night.

The forum called 'The Environmental Cost of Concealing Information' presented the case that free access to information was vital for public participation in government decision-making.

"Without freedom of information, people can't have a meaningful discussion to make decisions.

"Without decisions or information, they can't give the constructive criticism that the government needs to listen too (in order) to make good decisions," Randhawa said.

Another speaker at the forum, University Malaya lecturer Dr Azmi Sharom said environmental and land development issues would benefit from information being freely accessible to public scrutiny.

"Under the Land Conservation Act, any hillside is gazetted to be protected from wide-scale development. But if you go to Cameron Highlands, you see a lot of development.

"The conservation act was used to gazette Cameron Highlands but nothing happened. They still had projects there. What happened?" he asked.

EIA reports

In view of that, he said public access to information was very restricted and public comment or feedback on environmental issues as such were speculative or dismissed by the authorities for lack of information.

Azmi said environmental impact assessment (EIA) reports were not given prominence in government websites or publications.

He also criticised the cost of obtaining the EIA reports and the quality and the difficulty in understanding them.

Randhawa agreed, saying: "Orang Asli are the communities most affected by this. Most of them don't understand the reports and they feel disempowered."

The audience later watched independent film-maker Ong Ju Lin's documentary 'Alice Lives Here' on how residents in Broga responded when they found out that a waste incinerator would be built near their village.

"The documentary shows how Broga has been a case study on how difficult it is for people to get information that can change what's happening to their environment," Ong said.

OSA restrictions

Meanwhile, Randhawa said the enactment of laws like a FOI Act would assure that the people had access to information without restrictions often under the Official Secrets Act (OSA).

"Of course, the government has to operate with a certain amount of secrecy. If there was an on-going serious criminal investigation, it must be carried out without some parties knowing about it," she added.

However, she said the government operated with 'far too much secrecy' and the insistence on withholding information was having an adverse impact on the economy, health and environment.

"The Air Pollutant Index was an official state secret for some years until they declassified it. Imagine how much the information is important to an asthma sufferer?" she added.

Citing Works Minister S Samy Vellu's initial reluctance to release a list of Tamil primary schools, she said the people had the right to know how and where the money was spent on building the schools.

"Imagine classifying the location of the schools under the OSA. Wouldn't future students be breaking secrecy laws by going to the schools? What's the point of going to those schools, then? Of course the question (we want to know) is if the schools were built in the first place.

"Politics is not good enough a reason for withholding the information," she added.

She said a FOI Act would open up the access of information which was currently restricted under a broad interpretation under the OSA.

"Basically the FOI operates under the principle of maximum disclosure of information which would be a reversal of the OSA, " she said.

She said under FOI legislations, civil servants would be penalised for withholding information which was not classified under the OSA.

Randhawa said she was elated by PAS vice-president Husam Musa who on PAS TV (www.tvpas.com) had made a public commitment to passing an access to information law in Kelantan.