Minister: DPA won’t be used to block access to legitimate information
Published:Saturday | May 11, 2024 | 12:10 AM
Senator Dr Dana Morris Dixon, minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for Skills and Digital Transformation, has declared that the Government has no intention of using the Data Protection Act (DPA) to prevent Jamaicans from accessing legitimate government information.
The Cabinet minister was responding to a question on Friday from Peter Bunting, leader of Opposition business in the Senate, who asked Morris Dixon to provide a government response to the action by Tax Administration Jamaica (TAJ) to block a Gleaner request to release the names of the owners of two properties it is leasing.
The TAJ told The Gleaner on April 2, this year, that provisions in the DPA, which it declined to provide, barred it from disclosing who owns a property in Annotto Bay, St Mary, and another in Mandeville, Manchester.
However, the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC), which is the regulator under the DPA, contradicted TAJ’s claim that the law blocks the release of the names of owners of the properties that the government entity has leased.
The TAJ has since indicated that it was seeking “guidance” from the OIC on the matter.
Three weeks has passed since the OIC responded to the issue and to date it appears the TAJ’s consultation with the regulator has not led to any closure.
Morris Dixon told her colleagues yesterday that the “OIC remains in contact with the TAJ on that particular matter”.
“The Data Protection Act was never envisioned to be a law that would preclude the public from getting legitimate information that has been requested from the Government and we will not use it as such,” the Cabinet minister insisted.
“There is a right to understanding what the Government is doing and so those requests that are coming in, the information will be provided, and where there is doubt as to whether the data protection rules preclude from doing that, the OIC will opine,” she explained.
The Gleaner requested the information following an Auditor General’s report that triggered widespread debate and public outrage in March over revelations that the TAJ spent almost $400 million to lease two buildings that remained unoccupied up to August last year.