Poltava branch of a state agency ignores a query by "Poltavska Dumka"

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The Infrastructure Reconstruction and Development Service in Poltava oblast failed to respond to a query by the newspaper "Poltavska Dumka" and did not explain the reasons for the refusal. The newspaper's chief editor Diana Strashko reported this to the Poltava representative of the Institute of Mass Information.

According to Strashko, the publication sent their query to the Service on August 9. The journalists were asking for information on the repair of the Hadyach–Opishnya highway. As of September 10, the team has not received a reply.

"At first, the company's press office promised us a response to the query, and later, again through the press office, they told us that there would be no answer, because the boss has 'his own vision.' We were given no reasons for the refusal, nor even a written refusal," Diana Strashko said.

According to the chief editor, the team plans to file a complaint with the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights.

The IMI's media lawyer Volodymyr Zelenchuk notes that failure to respond to a query by the information holder is a type of violation of the right to information and of the right to appeal, as per the list included in Article 23 of the Law "On Access to Public Information".

"Such inaction can be appealed to the head of the information holding body or to a higher body or court. There is also a mechanism for submitting a complaint (in the form of an appeal) to the Commissioner's Office. Officials guilty of violating the right to information may be held administratively liable for failure to respond to a query, according to Part 2 of Article 212-3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (fine in the amount of UAH 425 to UAH 950)," commented Volodymyr Zelenchuk.

The lawyer also stressed that only a court can bring the guilty official to justice based on an administrative offense protocol compiled by an authorized person from the Commissioner's secretariat or by his representative.

"The protocol is written based on an examination into whether a violation occurred. That is, in order for a media outlet to influence the body that fails to answer their query and bring the guilty persons to justice, the best option would be to contact the Commissioner's Office. If a media outlet wants to effectively challenge the inaction and make the body finally provide an answer to the query, they have to to sue (reflecting the relevant claims: to challenge the inaction and to order the body to answer the query) in the district administrative court," says the lawyer.

As reported earlier, the Zaporizhia state-owned enterprise "Local Roads of Zaporizhzhia Oblast" has withheld 610 million hryvnias worth of estimates for the construction of underground schools from the Zaporizhzhia Center of Investigations (ZCI) for two months. The company has already dodged three queries.