Following SAHA's Promotion of Access to Information Act request to the Department of Transport, the department has finally released their whistle-blower policy.
On 25 May, SAHA received long overdue records from the Department of Transport. The request from SAHA was for the following:
Records, policies, procedures, directives, documents, or other information related to:
a) How your department prevents corruption and conflicts of interest within your department;
b) How your department responds to complaints about corruption and conflicts of interest within your department;
c) How, when, and by whom corruption is defined, investigated, and disciplined within your department;
d) How, when, and by whom conflicts of interest are defined, investigated, and disciplined within your department.
It needs to be noted that the department only released a whistle-blower policy document and has failed to provide SAHA with other records such as a policies on corruption itself.
The document released sets out the processes and procedures and the related structures that individual can approach when they are aware of corruption and or maladministration within the department.
Concern
Furthermore, after having perused the record, SAHA, was concerned about the classification code on the document.
The document was classified as "Confidential".
Why is this a for concern for SAHA?
Although the policies which detail processes and procedures are there, the current state of whistle-blower protection application on the ground is not up to the documents standard they are written on. This is evidenced by the amount of persons that face huge discrimination, possible loss of employment and even loss of life.
Furthermore, for purposes of making whistle-blowing a tool to blow out corruption, documents such as these should not be classified as such and in-fact they should be publicly made available through proactive disclosure.
Copies of the released document are available in the SAHA archive:
Freedom of Information Programme Collection: AL2878_A17.8.1
