The Information Minister-designate, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has provided a detailed update on the progress of the Right to Information (RTI) since it was passed into law in March 2019.
He said 455 out of 526 RTI officers have been trained to occupy Ministries, Departments and Agencies as part of a continuous effort to equip officers to make the implementation of the RTI successful and to ensure efficient compliance of the law by public institutions
Taking his turn at the Parliament Appointments Committee on Thursday, the Ofoase Ayirebi Member of Parliament emphasised that the training of the RTI officers was meant to educate them on the RTI Act 989.
This, he explained, is in order to equip them on the legalities of the law and how they are to operate within the framers of the law.
“Specifically on RTI, if I may have some liberty Mr Chairman to speak on it briefly, the law assented to in 2019 took effect in 2020. We have done a number of things.
“First, we have created the RTI division at the Information Ministry. We have trained and deployed RTI officers to Ministries, Departments and Agencies across the country as well as MMDAs and then independent constitutional bodies. We had a road map that records 26 different activities to execute for the implementation of RTI.
“Mr Chairman, I am happy to inform the committee that currently about 18 of those activities have been completed, five are ongoing and are not due to be executed yet.
“In terms of training and work, for example, Ministries, Departments and Agencies out of 526 officers that we need to train, we have trained 455 who are on the job today responding to RTI requests that are coming in,” he added
Providing updates on the number of RTI officers trained across all districts in the country, Mr Oppong Nkrumah noted that 483 out of 552 personnel have been trained so far.
“Across the districts, out of 552 that we are supposed to train, we have trained 483 and they are working today.
“At the end of 2020, the RTI units across government have received 56 requests, have responded to all of them granting access to 44 of them, about two of them were transferred, four of them were referred, one application was withdrawn, one was denied and is now on application for review,” he said.