Number of access denial complaints to Commissiner from Ternopil oblast grew by a third in 2024

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From January 1 to December 31, 2024, the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights received 120 appeals from Ternopil oblast reporting violations of the right to access public information, as told by Oleksandr Krynytskyi, the Commissioner's representative in Ternopil, to the regional Institute of Mass Information representative Iryna Nebesna.

The IMI previously reported that 94 such complaints from the oblast were received by the Commissioner in 2023, i.e. in 2024 the figure grew by almost 28%.

At the same time, the Commissioner's office could not say whom most of the complaints were about. The response to the IMI representative's request referred to Paragraph 1 of Article 22, Part 1 of the Law “On Access to Public Information”, which says that the information holder has the right to decline the request “in the event that the holder does not possess and is not obliged, as per their competence outlined by law, to possess the information requested.”

“The cited Law regulates relations regarding access to information that already exists and does not need to be created in response to the query. The information you requested was not created or recorded,” the Commissioner’s office replied.

However, back in September 2024, it was reported in response to a similar query that the largest number of complaints at that time had concerned local governments: Velyka Berezovytsia, Mykulyntsi, and Borsuky village councils.

According to the digital document management system Megapolis.DocNet, in 2023 the largest number of complaints from the oblast were against OJSC Ternopiloblenergo (six), the State Tax Service of Ukraine (three), the Ministry of Health (three) and local governments: the Ternopil City Council (7), Velyka Berezovytsia village council (13), and Borshchiv City Council (6).