Chernivtsi enterprise declines a journalist's request due to lack of electronic and hand-written signatures
The utility company "Chernivtsi Trolleybus Management" has not responded to an information request by "Molody Bukovynets" journalist Lyudmila Osadchuk since early April.
The journalist reported this on Facebook.
According to Osadchuk, she has been waiting for an response since the beginning of April instead of the five days prescribed by law.
"I did not ask for any classified information, just about the trolleybus administration personnel: how many drivers are needed, how many have been fired, what is the salary of trolleybus and bus drivers. I also asked them to share information about the administrative staff and their salaries. All this is documented by the Chernivtsi Trolleybus Management and providing a response in five days is not a problem. But somehow everything went wrong. I waited for an answer for over a week. And when I asked again, it turned out that my email was missing from their inbox. I'm sending a repeat request – and I'm waiting again," she wrote.
In her comment to an IMI representative, Lyudmila Osadchuk said that she had sent her request to the utility company's email address. After sending the repeat request, on the day of the legally established deadline, the journalist received a letter stating that the UC "Chernivtsy Trolleybus Management" could not consider her request, as it lacked an electronic signature or a hand-written signature.
"Then on April 11, I sent another, signed request. I'm waiting again. Today, the CTM replied that they had not seen my request because it was in the spam folder. So I am waiting for answers to my questions yet again," the journalist noted.
IMI lawyer Roman Holovenko noted that a hand-written signature is not required for a request sent via e-mail as a file.
"The Law on access to information requires the request to have a signature and a date only if the request is being submitted on paper (clause 3, part 5, article 19). And a request by e-mail is a 'different', non-written form of request, if you carefully read Part 3 of Art. 19 of the same law," explained Roman Holovenko.
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