RTI Commission Fines MoE GHC 50,000 over refusal to release school placement information to Eduwatch

The Right To Information (RTI) Commission has fined the Minister of Education GHC 50,000 for refusing to release information on school placement requested by Eduwatch in June 2022.

It has subsequently ordered the Ministry to provide the information in PDF or paper copy to Eduwatch immediately, as the requested information is not exempted from disclosure under the RTI Law.

According to the Right To Information Commission, the applicant requested that information regarding the computerized school placement for the year 2021/2022 academic year should be made available. The request was made through the Director-General.

The Applicant requested the index numbers of all candidates, a list of schools of all candidates placed, JHS attended by all candidates, list of raw scores of all candidates.

However, after the request for the above information, it was not honoured and no response was received from the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service.

Following the lack of response by the director-general of the Ghana Education Service, the applicant applied for internal review by the minister of education. The application for internal review was dated 28th July 2022, however, after the application for internal review, the applicant once again did not receive any communication from the minister of education.

The final decision on the matter by the RTI Commission was as follows.

Since the respondent failed to make decisions on the applicant’s application lodged with it, the respondent has clearly failed to perform its obligations under act 989 this is coupled with its failure to respond to the commission’s letter received by it. It furthered that such a posture by the respondent does go against the right to access to information and Article 21 subsection 1 f of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana.

It added that it disapproves in strong terms of the behaviour of the respondent.

For this reason and an administrative penalty of 50,000 Ghana cedis was imposed on the respondent and this shall be payable to the commission not later than 14 days after the receipt of this decision of the commission. The penalties imposed shall attract an additional potential default penalty rate of 10% on the principle that the sum of Ghs50,000 and in the event of default for any additional 14 days thereafter.

It also directed that the following pieces of information pertaining to the school placement for the 2021/ 2022 academic year to be released to the applicant

a. The index numbers of all candidates placed

b. Schools of all candidates list

c. JHS attended by all candidates placed

d. The Raw score of all candidates placed