Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Amidst con­cerns that the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act will be the death knell of in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism, Gov­ern­ment has ini­ti­at­ed a re­view of the act through pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion.

Parts of the act, which was as­sent­ed to in 2011, have sparked pub­lic out­cry from ex­ec­u­tives of the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T who said it would af­fect the abil­i­ty of the me­dia to func­tion ef­fec­tive­ly as the fourth es­tate.

A state­ment is­sued by the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions yes­ter­day said it has start­ed stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion and a re­view to im­prove and clar­i­fy the act.

Once the re­view is done and con­sul­ta­tions are com­plete, Gov­ern­ment said, it would make the nec­es­sary amend­ments and re­turn to the Par­lia­ment in the short­est pos­si­ble time­frame.

"This is to en­sure that the Act ful­fills its in­tend­ed pur­pose � to pro­tect pri­va­cy and per­son­al in­for­ma­tion in a re­spon­si­ble fash­ion and in a man­ner that does not un­du­ly in­fringe up­on oth­er civ­il lib­er­ties," the state­ment said.

The Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­istry, charged with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion and ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act, agreed that the act need­ed to be re­viewed holis­ti­cal­ly to har­monise pro­tec­tion of per­son­al pri­va­cy with free­dom of ex­pres­sion.

Say­ing the Gov­ern­ment un­der­stands the com­pet­ing fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms as en­shrined in the Con­sti­tu­tion as well as free­dom of ex­pres­sion, the min­istry said, "Notwith­stand­ing the strong pub­lic in­ter­est in pro­tec­tion of one's per­son­al and pri­vate in­for­ma­tion, there is an equal­ly strong pub­lic in­ter­est in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the pub­lic's right to know."

Last week, at­tor­ney Ria Mo­hammed-David­son, a lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Fac­ul­ty of Law, said if the act comes in­to force in its cur­rent form, jour­nal­ists could face jail time and all cit­i­zens will be sub­ject to ar­bi­trary search­es and seizures.

Say­ing it will be the death knell of in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism, Mo­hammed-David­son said the act crim­i­nalis­es jour­nal­ists who do not sub­scribe to a manda­to­ry code of con­duct for the unau­tho­rised dis­clo­sure of per­son­al in­for­ma­tion as well as the col­lec­tion, stor­age and dis­pos­al of per­son­al in­for­ma­tion.

The Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act was as­sent­ed to on June 22, 2011, and has par­tial­ly come in­to force by Le­gal No­tice No 2 of 2012.