Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship min­is­ter Dr De­vant Ma­haraj is warn­ing that pro­posed amend­ments to the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) could weak­en gov­ern­ment trans­paren­cy, ac­cus­ing the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion of un­der­min­ing leg­is­la­tion it in­tro­duced more than two decades ago.

Ma­haraj, who said he has used the FOIA ex­ten­sive­ly in the courts over the past 20 years, crit­i­cised a pro­posed change al­low­ing pub­lic au­thor­i­ties to pub­lish re­quired state­ments ei­ther in a dai­ly news­pa­per or on a pub­licly ac­ces­si­ble web­site.

Un­der the ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion, he said, pub­li­ca­tion is re­quired in both the Gazette and a dai­ly news­pa­per.

Ma­haraj ar­gued that re­plac­ing manda­to­ry news­pa­per pub­li­ca­tion with the op­tion of on­line pub­li­ca­tion could make in­for­ma­tion less ac­ces­si­ble, par­tic­u­lar­ly with­out a des­ig­nat­ed web­site, archiv­ing re­quire­ments or guar­an­tees that doc­u­ments would re­main avail­able.

“The Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act was de­signed to be in­con­ve­nient to gov­ern­ments of every colour,” Ma­haraj said, ar­gu­ing that this was pre­cise­ly what made the leg­is­la­tion an im­por­tant ac­count­abil­i­ty mech­a­nism.

He point­ed to long­stand­ing con­cerns about com­pli­ance with the Act, claim­ing that in 2019, on­ly 25 of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 259 pub­lic au­thor­i­ties re­quired to pub­lish an­nu­al state­ments did so in the Gazette.

Ma­haraj al­so cit­ed a De­cem­ber 2025 High Court rul­ing in­volv­ing the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs and the Chil­dren’s Life Fund Au­thor­i­ty, in which Jus­tice Robin Mo­hammed ad­dressed fail­ures to com­ply with pub­li­ca­tion re­quire­ments.

He ar­gued that rather than re­duc­ing pub­li­ca­tion oblig­a­tions, Gov­ern­ment should strength­en the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Unit, im­prove com­pli­ance and re­store re­port­ing to Par­lia­ment.

Ma­haraj al­so sup­port­ed con­cerns raised by Sen­a­tor Wes­ley Gib­bings that the amend­ment could af­fect the role of tra­di­tion­al me­dia in dis­sem­i­nat­ing pub­lic in­for­ma­tion.

“If this gov­ern­ment want­ed dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tion, it would add it,” Ma­haraj said.

He called on Par­lia­ment to re­ject the amend­ment, ar­gu­ing that mov­ing in­for­ma­tion from manda­to­ry news­pa­per pub­li­ca­tion to an on­line al­ter­na­tive should not be pre­sent­ed as mod­erni­sa­tion.