Richard Lord

The lone em­ploy­ee at the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Unit, Joann Bal­go­b­in, says the au­thor­i­ties are ne­glect­ing the unit and this was con­trary to its prin­ci­ples. Bal­go­b­in said so in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, a day af­ter Min­is­ter of State in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Rodger Samuel, said the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Unit was still op­er­a­tional. Bal­go­b­in con­firmed the unit was op­er­a­tional but said she was the lone em­ploy­ee. She said there was an ur­gent need for more staff at the unit as there were greater de­mands on it in the past months. She said every­body was seek­ing in­for­ma­tion un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act. She said peo­ple had been seek­ing in­for­ma­tion on the state of emer­gency and oth­er is­sues, in­clud­ing news­pa­per re­ports.

"The unit is be­ing ne­glect­ed and that is con­trary to the prin­ci­ples of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act," Bal­go­b­in said. "The unit was es­tab­lished to en­sure cit­i­zens get in­for­ma­tion, not to de­ny them the re­quired in­for­ma­tion." She said since last De­cem­ber, two mem­bers of staff went on leave and their con­tracts end­ed on Feb­ru­ary 1. She iden­ti­fied those for­mer em­ploy­ees as Rishi Ma­haraj, Se­nior Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer, Mon­i­tor­ing and Eval­u­a­tion, and An­drea Pe­ters, Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer, Client Re­la­tions and Train­ing. "I am the on­ly per­son em­ployed in the unit and I have to an­swer hun­dreds of calls, at­tend to the pub­lic and do sev­er­al oth­er things," Bal­go­b­in said. "There are chal­lenges at this unit and I don't think they are be­ing giv­en the re­quired pri­or­i­ty at­ten­tion." ­

She said the act pro­vid­ed for eight peo­ple to be em­ployed at the unit but this was nev­er achieved. She said more than six months ago, calls were made to the au­thor­i­ties to fill the va­can­cies but they went un­heed­ed. Bal­go­b­in said the unit was al­so un­able to per­form train­ing ser­vices to state bod­ies and oth­er de­part­ments across T&T on how to use the unit. She said while the unit was trans­ferred from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter to For­eign Af­fairs and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, it con­tin­ued to face tremen­dous chal­lenges. She said the Web site re­mained down so peo­ple were un­able to get the ap­pli­ca­tion forms on-line. She said they had to come to the of­fice to get that doc­u­ment. Mean­while, Samuel said on Mon­day that the Gov­ern­ment was seek­ing to en­sure that new con­tracts were signed as soon as pos­si­ble. The Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act was es­tab­lished to en­sure cit­i­zens can get ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion on the ac­tiv­i­ties of the Gov­ern­ment. The law pro­vides for cer­tain ex­empt­ed Gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments to be re­leased to the pub­lic on re­quest.