IT is a good thing that the Selangor State Assembly has tabled its Freedom of Information Enactment. Its eventual introduction should – presuming the implementers and civil servants do their job properly – have a multitude of spin-off benefits. I know this because, in my first full-time job in another legislature – the UK House of Commons – I invoked the Freedom of Information Act to help improve the lives of many in the town of Weston-super-Mare, situated in the constituency of the same name represented by the MP for whom I was working.
The town had an unusually high number of drug rehabilitation centres, partly owing to its serene environment. These centres received patients from all around the country, referred by doctors in far-flung clinics and hospitals who established that these individuals required such treatment. However, many of the patients subsequently escaped the centres, ending up on the streets of the town and contributing to low-level crime and social disturbances. Because the centres did not keep centralised records, it was very difficult to quickly identify either the centre they should have been attending or their hometown, and in many cases the individuals were not in a state of mind to usefully cooperate with the local police (they don’t have ICs in the UK, for very good other reasons).
The whole system was very cumbersome and proving a threat to the local community. We needed to find out where these individuals were coming from. But the information was not available. Facts like the date of arrival and place of origin of each individual were patchy. It was only by invoking the Freedom of Information Act that we obtained the information we needed. We wrote to every single major health provider in the country and, through the data gleaned from the responses they were legally bound to give, we were able to put together charts and maps that enabled us to identify the problem. Armed with these facts, we confronted the Health Minister and secured a change in policy that would ensure that future movement of those on rehabilitation was shared between all authorities concerned. Yes, at that time my MP was in the opposition and he used the government’s own Freedom of Information Act to improve the lives of those he represented.
There is no reason why such a scenario cannot happen here, and that is why the Selangor opposition legislators are wrong to oppose the principle of this legislation. It will in fact facilitate their job in keeping the government to account. As the civil servants in Yes, Minister often complain, freedom of information normally works against incumbent governments, even though its implementation may receive plaudits from the people.
The trick is to find imaginative ways to use the Freedom of Information Enactment to improve policymaking and here, any citizen can do their bit to ask the right questions to illuminate or analyse long-running issues. History buffs might benefit too, if records such as registers, declassified correspondence or receipts for government projects are made available.
A civil servant came round to collect my data for the census. I wasn’t in at the time, so she left the form, which I assiduously filled. I can overlook the mistakes in the English, and the silly page with all the ‘races’ the government thinks exists, but I’m quite upset that the bureaucrat didn’t return at the time that she said she would, since I made it a point to be at the premises. She left an email address (what looks like a personal one @yahoo.com rather than an official government one), but it’s illegible. On the other hand, it took a mere day for my new MyKad to arrive. If the chaps at PEMUDAH could work on consistency across services, that would be great!