The majority of Freedom of Information requests decided upon by eight ministries were refused, information tabled in Parliament revealed.
PN MP Karol Aquilina, speaking with The Malta Independent, said that he filed the request with all ministries, in the form of asking Parliamentary Questions. To be precise, he requested the ministries to table the number of requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act since 3 June 2017 ( the last general election), till today, with their respective ministries and all entities and authorities that fall under them. The ministers were also asked for information as to how many were accepted, how many refused and the number still pending, as well as reasons for such cases being refused.
The Office of the Prime Minister, the Home Affairs Ministry, the tourism Ministry, the Finance Ministry, the European Affairs and Equality Ministry, the Economy Ministry, the Education and Employment Ministry and the energy and Water Management Ministry received, in total since 3 June 2017, 342 such requests.
The data shows that 29 requests are still pending, and 8 requests were cancelled by the person filing it.
This means that 305 cases were decided. Over half (165) of the requests were refused, while 140 were accepted.
In terms of the reasons for refusal, the various ministries said that this was due to the requested information not falling within the parameters of the Freedom of Information Act. Some also argued that requests were rejected as the
Documents requested were not held by the public authority, among other reasons They said that the requests were made from different media houses, and private individuals.
The Health Ministry has also thus far responded, and noted that since 3 June 2013, 28 requests were filed. The ministry however did not provide numerical details as to the amount approved, refused and pending, hence their data was not taken into consideration. The only thing the ministry said was that aside from the ones pending, the majority of requests were approved.