Dubious honour for Home Affairs

THE passport division of the Ministry of Home Affairs has received an award for being the most secretive and non-transparent public institution in Namibia.

Not surprisingly, no one from the Ministry collected the 2009 Golden Padlock Award on monday when the Media Institute of Southern Africa released the results of its recent survey on the transparency of public institutions.The Ministry of Health was the recipient of the Golden Key Award for the most open and transparent government institution in Namibia, followed by the Ministry of Finance.Kaitira Kandjii, Misa’s regional director, said they analysed the relevancy and currency of websites and gave the government agencies written requests for specific information.’Each institution had 30 days in which to respond to the request. A failure to respond to the request within 30 days was regarded as a refusal,’ said Sampa Kangwa-Wilkie, programme specialist for freedom of expression and media law policy at Misa.Six institutions, namely the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Electoral Commission of Namibia, public broadcaster NBC, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Finance and the Tender Board were approached and analysed between July 24 and August 30 this year.All six government and public institutions surveyed had websites but only the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Health and Social Services had regularly updated information, while the others had outdated and in many cases little or irrelevant information.With the exception of the Ministry of Finance none of the five other websites contained information on their annual budgets, expenditure, procurement or employment procedures. ‘For a public broadcaster mandated to among others inform and educate the public, the NBC website neither informed nor was educative,’ said Kangwa-Wilkie.Kandjii said the Electoral Commission of Namibia was no better.He said the ECN operations remain unknown and inaccessible to citizens or researchers needing information on the electoral map since Independence.The ECN re-launched its website this month after the first one had been dormant for some time.Kangwa-Wilkie said all six Government and public institutions surveyed did not respond to written requests for information.’This makes Namibian public institutions among the most secretive in the region,’ she said.She said only six per cent of Namibians have access to the Internet, which effectively means that 94 per cent must use other means to access the information they need from Government.’This is deeply worrying that all six institutions failed to respond to written requests for Government-held information. If we use international best practice and principles on Access to Information, none of the institutions met the criteria,’ Kangwa-Wilkie said. The passport division of the Ministry of Home Affairs was followed by the Electoral Commission and the NBC as the most secretive or non-transparent institutions.’All three institutions pose a threat to citizens’ right to access information and they need to re-evaluate their role as public institutions,’ Kandjii said.