PR Society wants ATI implementation shelved: Argues regulations were drafted without stakeholder consultations

The Public Relations Society of Malawi (PRSM) has asked the Tonse-led administration to shelve the gazetting and operationalization of Access to Information (ATI) Act regulations until adequate consultations are done with prospective implementation agencies and other stakeholders.

In a statement signed by the society’s president Lewis Msasa, the group said while it commends the new administration for its commitment and sense of urgency to operationalize the long-awaited ATI Act, there is a serious omission in a democratic dispensation in the way the government drafted the regulations that will facilitate the implementation of the Act.

Reads the society’s statement in part: “The draft regulations in the current form have serious gaps and impractical demands that will certainly undermine the implementation of the ATI Act.

“The regulations are critical in the successful implementation of the ATI Act and any rush to gazette them without ensuring that the requirements therein are realistic and practical would result into public institutions struggling to comply with the law, thereby denying Malawians access to information which they need for the exercise of their rights.”

According to Msasa, PRSM believes that a slight delay in the gazetting of the regulations to allow reasonable consultations with stakeholders, including heads of implementation agencies and their communications personnel as well as relevant professional bodies, is important and necessary for the successful operationalization of the ATI Act.

But government spokesperson and Minister of Information, Gospel Kazako, says government will go ahead with the implementation of the Act.

It is not yet clear what steps PRSM will take to stop the implementation of the Act.

The gazetting of the date for the rollout of the implementation of the Act earned the Tonse government a pat on the back, especially from the media and human rights organizations, which have been fighting for the enactment of the law.

PRSM was officially launched on August 4  2018  to promote professional PR for national development.