Bula (hello in Fijian). I just came out of an interesting meeting here at the Sheraton resort in Nadi titled the Pacific Workshop on Access to Information. This meeting is a pre-lude for parliamentarians around the Pacific (Tonga, Samoa, Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu) who are here for the big Commonwealth meeting - 51st Commonwealth Parliamentarians meeting which will officially begin on September 6th. So there are also participants from Uganda, Canada, from the UK, Zimbabwe, Barbados and so forth - all the 52 countries in the commonwealth.

Anyway, I just wanted to share about the important of having access to information. This is indeed a global concept and we here in the Pacific have no laws or legislation on Freedom of Information (FOI) unlike Australia, New Zealand, India, Mexico and other countries around the world. However, this area is being considered by Pacific Island countries but nothing has to come pass.

FOI, allows not only the media to have acces to information about Parliaments and Government's work but also the ordinary person - the public.

What I learnt today was how important information is to the ordinary bloke in Australia, or to the poor who depend on rice rations in India.

Being informed about your rights is so important because that is what democracy is about. Bringing me to the point of even knowing who your elected members in Parliament or in Government or in a federal state or even your local councillors.

This entails an informed constituency and therefore informed voters.

Exercising your FOI legislation if you have it in your country is important in this case that your Government recognises that you have the right to know who exactly you are appointing in power - that means you can apply for information to be given to you about the person you want to elect because that is your right under your FOI system.

At the grassroots level however, local issues affecting these people can be raised under this FOI system. Like for instance, an example at this meeting given was how poor people in a region in India were receiving rice rations and this particular woman when she asked about an update to see how many rations are actually given to people and at what intervals, she was told they did not have that information. She was assisted by a particular NGO and got other people to start asking about their rice rations information. Apparently, those giving out the rice rations would tick the people's name on their list but not give them their due and would then sell the rice on the black market. And this woman exercised her right under the Freedom of Information Act in India and after two years was given this information and therefore these people handing out rice were also being scrutinised and made accountable for what they gave out.

Share your thoughts with me on this issue please.

Thank you .

Reama Naco