The Law Has Been Broken but Nobody Has Been Punished

The Law Has Been Broken but Nobody Has Been Punished

State bodies and officials should allow the public access to public information - but the laws regarding freedom of information are often broken. Some government agencies who do not respect such laws are: the Tbilisi Municipality, the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Chancellory .

According to the Administrative Law article 37, ‘anyone can demand information, in any form; they also have the right to read information in its original format. Public bodies are obliged to provide the person with the original document and let them read it under supervision or give them a copy of the particular document.’
 
According to article 38, ‘there should not be any fee to obtain public information, except the cost of the photocopy.’
 
According article 40, ‘public bodies are obliged to reveal information within ten days.’ In spite of these good intentions of these laws, what happens in reality is very much different. NGOs and journalists often come across problems relating to freedom of information, not to mention those seeking information who are socially excluded.

Nana Biganishvili, a journalist for the show ‘60 Minutes’, applied to the courts 15 months ago but in vain: “In 2004 I demanded information from a Shida Qartli representative regarding the financial controls of the budget. We could not get any answer for a long time but after a while they sent the part of the requested information by fax. 500,000 lari entered the Qartli Budget. In the document, only 71 000 lari were accounted for, leaving 429.000 lari unaccounted for. After that I applied to the courts in Gori. The court date has since been postponed 12 times and my case has gone to every instance of the court, finally arriving back at the Gori Court after all that. I wanted the information immediately, but the court process is still going on after one year.”
 
In spite of the fact that it is a crime (article 153), there have not been any cases where somebody has actually been punished for hiding public information. There have been many cases where information has initially not been revealed but eventually, after a complaint has been filed, the information has been miraculously produced.
 
The Young Lawyers Association and Public Defenders Office have won many cases against government bodies, including: the Tbilisi Municipality, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Security and the Board of Security. The punishment however in each of these cases was merely to force the officials to reveal the requested information.

As ombudsmen Sozar Subari states, there have been many complaints regarding freedom of information: “According to the complaints received by our office so far, the worst offenders are the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Tbilisi Municipality and the Ministry of Agriculture. According to the law (article 21), we can only demand information. There have not been any occasions when somebody was actually punished for hiding information.”

Eka Gulua