Open access law empowers rakyat to push back

The Star

4 days ago

PETALING JAYA: From a project to build artificial islands to an apartment complex that could worsen congestion in the neighbourhood, the Penang Freedom of Information Enactment has helped residents challenge government decisions that impact their everyday lives.
Civil society groups and residents say that the enactment has helped them get crucial information to challenge the state government's decisions.
Based on this, they welcome a national-level law which is the proposed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), that would allow anyone to access information kept by the Federal Government.
However, they also said that the FOIA must avoid the pitfalls of the Penang enactments, such as the high cost of making an information request.
Recounting his experience with Penang's freedom of information law, Ravinder Singh said that it allowed him to gain access to a traffic study for an apartment complex project in his neighbourhood.
This followed worries that the new 28-storey project would worsen traffic congestion in the area as there was only one access road, said Ravinder of Taman Desa Jelita.
'I wanted to know how the project was approved and whether a traffic impact assessment was done,' said Ravinder, who then filed a Freedom of Information request with the state government.
A state information officer denied the request, but that decision was overturned by an appeals board.
'The project consultant proposed widening some of the roads but some details were missing. So now I'm following up with an application to get the plans on road widening and on drainage.'
Ravinder is worried that widening roads for the new project would take away pavements for pedestrians, forcing them to walk alongside cars, motorcycles and lorries.
'These reports will help us challenge the project with the local authorities,' he said, adding that this has helped residents like him hold their local authorities accountable for decisions that impact them.
Similarly, the Penang enactment allowed civil society to gain access to information on the Penang South Islands Reclamation Project (PSR), which then helped them challenge the initiative.
'We wanted to know when planning permission for the project was granted by the local authority,' said Meenakshi Raman, president of Sahabat Alam Malaysia.
'This has led us to file a case at the Penang High Court, challenging the approval of planning permission by the state and local authorities.
'If not for the FOIA, it would have been very difficult to know when planning permission was granted,' she added.
Penang's civil society groups and fishermen have opposed the reclamation project, which aims to build artificial islands off Penang's southern coast.
According to the project's environmental impact assessment report, the project will harm the ecosystem and destroy the livelihoods of coastal fishermen.
'The Freedom of Information Enactment of Penang is a good piece of law that has helped us obtain information from the state agencies which is in the public interest,' said Meenakshi.
A federal FOIA, she said, should be an improvement over the Penang law and ensure that any citizen who gets access to information should be allowed to have a copy of it.
'There should not be a need to go to the Board of Appeal to have the document,' she said referring to Ravinder's case.
Information officers also need to be properly trained to act in accordance with the law, and not against it, she added.
Ravinder also proposed that the national law include administrative penalties for civil servants who unlawfully decline information requests.