The Commission for Protection of the Right to Free Access to Public Information, the Foundation Open Institute Macedonia – FIOOM, the Macedonian Association of Young Lawyers and the Macedonian Educational Forum (MEF) have today held a press conference celebrating September 28th – the International Day of the Free Access to Public Information, marked all over the world under the motto “I Have the Right to Know”.Ljubica Stanojoska, member of the Commission stressed that during the past nine months, as well as from the beginning of the legal establishing of the free access to public information in the Republic of Macedonia three years ago, the Commission completely dedicated itself to the work and focused its work towards the information holder, which are the main factor for fulfilling the constitutional and the legal rights of the citizens.
She informed that in the past nine months of this year, the Commission received a total of 250 complaints, 120 submitted by physical and 130 by legal entities (27 – FIOOM, 42 – Young Lawyers, 42 – MEF.
From the legal aspect, 205 complaints were submitted because of silence of administration, 16 were result of dissatisfaction of the decisions made by the information holder and 29 were motivated by the answer given by the information holder. Out of the total number of complaints, 110 are against the state institutions, 47 against the local self government, 7 against public enterprises and institutions, 7 against health care institutions, 5 against legal and physical entities that perform public authorizations, 10 against the judicial authorities and 64 against educational institutions.
According to Stanojoska, the Commission decided on all the complaints and adopted 88 decisions and 101 conclusions, and 58 complaints are still in process. 3 of the complaints were not viewed by the Commission because the first degree organ already brought decisions on the complaints.
In this period, 19 law suits were submitted to the Administrative Court and 2 requests for repeating the procedure.
Stanojoska also spoke on the activities of the Commission pointed towards the rising of the awareness for the Law, through the completed trainings for the official persons of the information holders, as well as educational and promotional activities realized through the publishing activities of the Commission.
The representatives of the non-governmental organizations that are also contributing to the implementation of the Law on Free Access to Public Information, pointed out to some of the weaknesses and the problems that emerged during the application of the Law. According to their analyses, the information holders (and their official persons) are mainly inert and are not complying with their legal obligation to make their information accessible, and are not obeying the legal deadlines. According to their data, the largest number of requests was answered by the information holders only after complaints were submitted to the Commission.
This practice, according to the people from the mentioned NGOs, is a result of their information that some official persons are employed on different working positions and have different professional obligations and they don’t consider the issues of the free access as a priority.
Although the number of citizens that are informed about the Law on Free Access to Public Information is very small, the NGO sector representatives note, yet it is encouraging that 83% of the informed citizens think that the existence of the Law is of great importance, recognizing here one of the key instruments for fighting corruption and increasing the transparency and the efficiency of the administration.