|
Back to Index
Your
Right to Access Information - What is your right to privacy?
Legal Resources
Foundation (LRF)
May 24, 2002
The Access
to Information and Protection of Privacy Act [Chapter 10:27] is
now in operation. If you are a citizen of Zimbabwe or lawfully resident
in this country, you have a right to examine, and to obtain copies of,
certain documents and information kept or controlled by "public bodies".
What are "public
bodies"?
The following
bodies are public bodies for the purposes of the Act:
- Government departments,
agencies and offices;
- Local authorities;
- Parastatals;
- Courts and tribunals;
- Professional bodies
established by statute, as well as any of the following professional
bodies (which are not established by statute):
- The Bankers
Association of Zimbabwe;
- The Chartered
Institute of Management Accountants;
- The Institute
of Architects of Zimbabwe;
- The Institute
of Bankers in Zimbabwe;
- The Institute
of Directors;
- The Institute
of Personnel Management (Zimbabwe)
- The Commercial
Farmers Union (C.F.U.)
- The Zimbabwe Farmers
Union (Z.F.U.)
- The Indigenous
Commercial Farmers Union (I.C.F.U.)
- The Zimbabwe Congress
of Trade Unions (Z.C.T.U.)
- The Zimbabwe Federation
of Trade Unions
- The Institute of
Environmental Studies
- The Institute of
Mining Research
- Medical aid societies
- All public companies.
What is "personal
information"?
"Personal information"
includes such things as a person’s name, address or telephone number,
his or her age, sex, sexual orientation or marital status, his or her
fingerprints or blood-group, information about his or her health, financial
or employment history, and his or her personal views or opinions.
When may public
bodies collect personal information?
A public body may
collect such personal information only in the following circumstances:
- if the body is
expressly authorised to do so under any law; or
- if the information
is collected for the purposes of national security, public order, law
enforcement or public health; or
- if the information
is directly relevant to the public body’s programmes, functions or activities
and is needed for any of those programmes, functions or activities;
or
- if the information
is to be used to formulate public policy.
In most cases a
public body must collect personal information directly from the person
concerned, and must tell anyone whom it asks for personal information
why it needs the information.
Correction of personal
information held by a public body
A public body must
take all reasonable steps to ensure that personal information it holds
is accurate, if it intends to use the information to make a decision
that directly affects the person concerned.
If anyone believes
that a public body’s information about him is inaccurate, he may ask
the head of the public body to correct the information, and the head
must correct or annotate that person’s record.
Protection of personal
information from disclosure or misuse
Public bodies must
take reasonable steps to ensure there is no unauthorised access or disclosure
of personal information kept in their records.
If a public body
uses any personal information to make a decision that directly affects
the person concerned, the public body must keep the information for
a year so as to give the person reasonable access to it.
A public body may
not use personal information for any purpose other than the purpose
for which the information was obtained, unless the person concerned
agrees to the information being used for some other purpose. The public
body may however, disclose the information for historical purposes if
the disclosure would not amount to an unreasonable invasion of the person’s
privacy or if the person has been dead for 30 years or more.
Visit the LRF fact sheet
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
TOP
|
