Support For Right To Information On Pentecost

“I went to Vila to try and get information on some work that I was doing and I ended up staying in Vila for seven months. It cost me over three hundred thousand vatu (VT300, 000) and I did not finish my work and came back, also the family that I was with were getting tired of me”…

RTI Awareness To Be Conducted Around Pentecost Island

OFFICERS FROM TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL VANUATU will be conducting several community awareness and consultation sessions on the Right To Information (RTI) Bill with several communities around the south of island of Pentecost from the 19th to the 24th of August.

This Pentecost RTI Awareness is the seventh of its kind to be conducted in Vanuatu in partnership with the Governments Right To Information Unit. The islands that have already been visited are the islands of Tanna, Malekula, Santo, Malo, Ambae, and Vanua Lava.

The team from Transparency International Vanuatu will be visiting communities beginning from the south of Pentecost then gradually moving up to the communities in the central part of the island before concluding the program in the north.

The Right To Information Policy was launched by the government in early 2014, thereby forming the basis for the Right To Information Bill to be developed. The RTI Bill was listed to be debated in Parliament in late 2014 but was withdrawn for further revisions, it was listed to be discussed during the First Ordinary Session of Parliament of 2016 but was again withdrawn.

While the officers are there community leaders who wish to have the RTI awareness conducted in their community can conduct Transparency International Vanuatu (Tel: 25715) to identify their locations so that the team can visit them to share information on the contents of the Right To Information Bill.

 

 

Momentous Stories From 36 Year Ago

Transparency International Vanuatu (TIV) had the opportunity to talk with some of the nation’s founding leaders and record their experiences. Some of their stories were published in a series of articles titled ‘From Statelessness To Freedom’ in 2015 through to early 2016.