Officials who withhold information from the public, even when abuses can be discovered through them, are granted amnesty by the Information and Privacy Agency. This agency only fines institutions. As a result, for hiding information, the cost is paid from the state budget and not from the pocket of the responsible official.
No public official has been fined by the Information and Privacy Agency in cases where the parties were denied access to public information or documents.
Although the Law on Access to Public Documents foresees the fining of both the institution and the responsible officials, the AIP has said that only the institutions are fined.
“This legal practice (addressing the fine to the institution, not the responsible official, respectively the chief administrative officer) has been installed in order to raise awareness at the level of the institution to which this measure is imposed, i.e. to give a reason to the holder not to allow the repetition of receiving the fine, which affects the image of the institution he leads. Otherwise, the imposition of a fine directly to the ZKA of an institution is legally equivalent to the practice currently followed by AIP. The Agency for Information and Privacy has addressed all the fines imposed so far in the field of freedom of information to the public institution”, says the response of the Agency for Information and Privacy.
According to the Agency, the Municipality of Pristina, the Ministry of Infrastructure, SHSKUK and the University of Pristina have each been fined 3,000 euros.
In the civil society, they have emphasized that only the measure of the fine against the responsible officials who deny access to the documents, would achieve the goal of full transparency.
“In each case, the responsible person should also be fined because it is in his will, in each case it is in his will, in the subjective interpretation of the responsible person that then he is clothed with public authorization that represents the institution and that in the end the burden falls on the institution itself, so it would be necessary for the responsible person to become responsible for financial measures so that he also knows the weight of his decision, which he gives for a specific request, for a specific party”, he said. stated Naim Jakaj, researcher at the Kosovo Institute for Justice.
This was also emphasized by the director of the FOL Movement, Mexhide Demolli.
“There should even be fines for specific individuals, for those who refuse access, especially in those requests that should be public, even without making the request at all, in those information or documents that should be public, without making a request either to journalists or civil society,” said Demolli.
Civil society representatives have assessed that the current system of sanctions for non-implementation of the Law on Access to Public Documents is not effective.
They have also requested the revision of the law, in order to expand the powers of the Information and Privacy Agency, since the process that aims to guarantee access to public documents, in many cases ends only with the imposition of a fine, without ensuring the provision of the requested information.
