ISLAMABAD, May 20: Pakistan People's Party (PPP) MNA Sherry Rehman has submitted a bill, called "Freedom of Information Act 2004", to the National Assembly Secretariat in order to create what she says essential involvement of civil society in public service issues by giving them access to records of public bodies.

Speaking at a news conference with PPP Senator Farhatullah Khan Babar here on Thursday, Ms Rehman said 12 other members of the party had also signed the bill in order to make it a 'party bill'.

The PPP leader said the existing Press Freedom Ordinance 2002 had made access to information extraordinary difficult. She said her bill sought to repeal the existing ordinance and introduce a new act.

She was of the view that unless her bill was passed, the present ordinance would continue to serve as a vehicle for denying information. She said when good governance and transparency were being talked about, it was a basic right of journalists and citizens to have access to information.

Giving salient features of the bill, she said the present law applied only to federal records whereas the PPP bill had included not only provincial but municipal records as well.

She said in the existing laws, there was a clause which exempted the documents from public access in the name of 'national security'. She said 'national security' could be defined as anything and everything so that all records could be exempted from public access.

The PPP bill, she said, followed an internationally accepted model of minimal exemptions. The PPP bill, she said, provided for declassification of public records after a period of 20 years. Had the PPP bill been in place, the Hamoodur Rahman Commission report would have become a public record automatically, she said.

The PPP MNA said the bill reversed the ordinance 2002 clause of excluding non-Pakistanis from accessing public records. The PPP, she said, believed that the reservation of the right to access information to only Pakistani citizens was unfair as it would exclude foreign historians, researchers and journalists who were often in a position to write without fear of persecution.

Moreover, Ms Rehman said, the PPP bill protected information from being destroyed by an official seeking to conceal evidence by declaring it an offence punishable by imprisonment and fines.

The PPP leader said the bill provided for 14 days as maximum time for disposal of matters in case of an appeal was made to the Ombudsman against any government official for declining to disclose information.