Government plays hide and seek with information

Many stakeholders in Ghana’s oil and gas industry will bear witness to the fact that access to information on the extractive industry in Ghana is not easy to come by and therefore with government announcement of Cabinet’s approval of the Freedom of Information Bill, comes joy and fanfare however short lived. Also institutions that play key role in the extractive industry in Ghana such as the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative Secretariat and the Public Interest Accountability Committee have readily welcomed the announcement. The freedom of information bill basically seeks to make all government information available to every Ghanaian citizen upon request. According to Mr Franklin Ferdinand Ashiadey, Coordinator of the EITI, the announcement is welcomed news and “It will complement our work greatly. People that are not willing to disclose information due to secrecy or confidentiality will be compelled to do so”. For Ishmael Edjekumhene, a member of PIAC, “Any law that seeks to entrench transparency, accountability and good governance is welcome news for us”. PIAC is one of the few institutions in Ghana whose operation is not hindered by confidentiality clauses. “Even GNPC is compelled to give as confidential information”, he added. According to Section 49 Clause 5 of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act, Act 815, “The declaration of confidentiality shall not limit access to information by Parliament and the Public Interest Accountability Committee established under this Act”. Clauses 1 and 2 of Section 49 of the same Act 815 emphasis transparency as a fundamental principle and demands that the management of petroleum revenue and savings shall always be carried out with the highest internationally accepted standards of transparency and good governance. It further provides that the duties concerned with ancillary matters of petroleum revenue and savings shall be discharged with the highest internationally accepted standards of transparency and good governance. However, Clauses 3 and 4 of Section 49 seems to contradict the spirit of access to information when it provides that “Information or data, the disclosure of which could in particular prejudice significantly the performance of the Ghana Petroleum Funds may be declared by the Minister as confidential, subject to the approval of Parliament. The declaration of confidentiality shall provide a clear explanation of the reason for treating the information or data as classified, taking into account the principles of transparency and the right of the public to information”. But latest developments indicate that the jubilations have to be put on hold since the bill is not out of the woods yet. According to the Commonwealth Human Right Initiative, CHRI, the present location and status of the bill cannot be determined. Mina Mensah, Regional Coordinator for CHRI and a member of the Right to Information Coalition told Orient Energy Review that their checks at the legislature yielded no result as the lawmaking body indicated that the bill has not been laid before it. A quick check at the Attorney General’s office was also inconclusive. She complained that the coalition is deeply concern with the secrecy surrounding government announcement and the actual status of the bill, adding that, “As I speak to you now, we cannot tell the content of the bill, whether it includes the recommendations we proposed or not and whether changes have been made to it from the old one.” She was of the view that the moment government announced the approval of the bill the content should have been in the public domain. The Freedom of Information Bill has been on the table of successive government in Ghana for a long time. The role access of information plays in good governance, transparency and accountability cannot be overemphasized. According to the Human Right Watch, the public should be able to hold governments accountable for the decisions they make. The group insisted that transparency can only be said to exist in an atmosphere were ordinary citizens can freely access and asses government data, scrutinize government decisions and hold leaders responsibly for the decisions they made. A recent report on the Resource Governance Index (RGI), which measures the quality of governance in the oil, gas and mining sector of 58 countries worldwide base on four criteria: legal framework, transparency levels, checks and balances and its broader governance context; reveals that transparency and good governance is crucial to most of the countries sampled, especially African countries, in maximizing their earnings in the extractive industry. The RGI is based on the premise that good governance of natural resources is necessary for the successful development of countries with abundant oil, gas and minerals. It provides a diagnostic tool to help identify good practices as well as governance shortcomings. In another report issued in May by the Africa Progressive Panel on the extractives industry in Africa which underscore the need for greater transparency in the extractive industry, the Former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, “emphasized that success will require leadership, transparency, and accountability, too. There is no substitute for public scrutiny in developing effective and equitable policies. African governments must rise to the challenges posed by fiscal policy, tax reform and the development of industrial policies. They must manage their countries’ oil, gas and mining resources efficiently and share revenues fairly.”