Citizens, journalists, NGOs and all other requesters of public information in North Macedonia still mostly complain to the Agency for Protection of the Right to Free Access to Public Information about the silence of the administration. Even 163 of a total of 222 applications submitted to the Agency during the first six months of 2020 are about the failure of the public information holders to act on the requests within the legal frame of 20 business days after the receipt of the request, or 30 days if the application is for great quantity of information.
The Agency started with a training program for the public information officers for timely release of the public information and by the end of this year, a total od 20 trainings will be held, out of which 8 will be online sessions. Their aim is to enable and educate the officials in the institutions that hold public information.
The Agency disclosed for “Meta.mk” that in the first half of the year, they were able to identify 15 from more than a total of 222 applications, that were most likely submitted by journalists or journalists ‘ associations, and most of them were complaints about failure to act by the holders of public information in the legaly determined time frame, although the complaints from the journalists and the media outlets differed in content from the complaints by other requesters.
This article was produced within the framework of the project “Media Reform Observatory“, implemented by the Foundation for Internet and the Society “Metamorphosis”, with financial support by the Foundation “Open Society – Macedonia”.
The content is sole responsibility of its authors and in no way whatsoever could be understood as a representation of the views of the Foundation “Open Society – Macedonia”.
