Broadcast and Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation will be passed in the next session of Parliament, President Bharrat Jagdeo said yesterday, in the latest of a series of promises.
Asked during an informal interview at the International Conference Centre, Jagdeo said the legislation would soon be tabled in the National Assembly. “As soon as Parliament comes out of recess…freedom of information… and the broadcast legislation will be passed,” he said.
In April last year, during the Summit of Americas in Trinidad, Jagdeo told reporters that the FOI legislation would be tabled in the National Assembly within two months. In October the same year, Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon pledged that the FOI Bill and the long-delayed broadcast legislation were among bills that would be tabled during the last parliamentary session.
Opposition party the Alliance For Change (AFC) has already tabled private broadcast and FOI bills in the National Assembly but the House was told that the government is drafting its own legislation.
