Easy access at the tip of your fingers, subscribe to our daily ePaper version of our New Era Newspaper.
Home / MICT warns officials withholding public information
MICT warns officials withholding public information
2018-04-23Staff Report 2 Albertina Nakale Windhoek-The Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT) has warned that it will deal with government offices, ministries and agencies that compromise access to information to the public. ICT Deputy Minister Engelbrecht Nawatiseb said the ministry deliberately undertook regional visits to establish whether citizens have access to reliable information and whether regional and local authorities have set up websites to retrieve such information. However, he said, they were disappointed to discover that in most respects these sub-national government agencies have failed them in disseminating public information. “We want to establish the reluctance why constituencies, municipalities and the OMAs in general are not providing these services. Government is serious that whatever decisions are taken by authority at executive level cascades down to the general public. And we are going to leave not stone unturned. We will ensure people are taken to task is they fail the government,” he threatened. He said they plan to organise a centralised venue to explain the ministry’s mandate to accelerate access to information. “Some sub-national institutions operate from the central server which is hosted by the Office of the Prime Minister while others rely on their internal expertise to set up websites and provide internet services.” Nawatiseb said they only have one centralised internet access point which is in Windhoek at Telecom, leaving most regions out. Therefore, he noted that ICT Minister Stanley Simataa has now rolled out a campaign to engage regions countrywide to address the issue and also establish the root causes to these challenges which lead to poor service delivery. He said Simataa is currently in Otjiwarongo where he is engaging the region on how they can improve the status quo. The workshop will then extend to the Khomas Region on April 26, and then other regions will follow. He also touched on the issue of time change, which leave many travellers lost because the government did not allegedly inform international databases to effect the Namibian time change. It is reported that some international travellers are affected because when they book their flights, they have a different time zone of international databases but in actual fact, the Namibian time did not change. Nawatiseb informed the public and visitors alike that the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration that is the custodian of the time will soon prepare a ministerial statement to be delivered in parliament to iron out the issue. Since the first Sunday of April there was no time change, after the Namibian Time Act of 1994 was replaced by the Namibian Time Act of 2017 after a round of national public consultation. This means that the standard time of Namibia is two hours in advance of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). 2018-04-23Staff Report 2
