Zaporizhzhia City Council turns down journalist's request for information

Photo by dejure.foundation

The Zaporizhzhia City Council refused to disclose information on the state of unfinished buildings in Zaporizhzhia to 061.ua journalist Elmira Shagabudtdinova.The journalist reported this to the Institute of Mass Information representative in Zaporizhzhia oblast.

Officials initially declined to comment on the topic and later refused to respond to the part of the request covered by the Law on Access to Public Information, Elmira says.

In her request, the journalist was asking for information about the task force meant to oversee the completion of the construction of the residential complexes "Tykhyi Center" and  "Zirkovy", as well as about the date of the task force's latest meeting and what is to happen to the property of depositors who have no registered property rights.

"To prepare a news story on unfinished buildings in Zaporizhzhia, we needed a comment from Zaporizhzhia City Council representatives. I asked the City Council's press office to help me get the comment, but I was told that none of the authorized persons want to speak with journalists.

"Then I submitted an information request to the City Council. However, they did not even want to register it. I received a letter from the executive committee saying that they needed a signature on the document. I know that according to the Law on Access to Public Information, a request must only be signed if it is submitted on paper. Still, I submitted the request again with a digital signature. After that, I received a reply saying that the requested information was not public and the request would not be reviewed accordingly," the journalist said.

The reply, signed by Natalia Avramenko, head of the Citizen Appeals and Access to Public Information Department of the Zaporizhzhia City Council, informed the journalist that it had not been a request, but an appeal, and that it had been passed along for processing within 30 days.

IMI lawyer Roman Holovenko notes that the refusal to provide information due to the lack of a handwritten signature is an obvious violation: "Since this is not a request submitted in writing, but in 'other' form, according to Part 3 of Art. 19 of the Law on Access to Public Information."

After reviewing the journalist's request, Roman Holovenko concluded that the submitted document is a request to a large extent, although one of the three questions can indeed be interpreted as an appeal for comment.

"Overall, it follows from the reply that they will provide the comment within the timeframe outlined by the Law 'On citizens' appeals', usually it is 30 days. But two out of three questions should be answered under the Law 'On Access to Public Information,'" says the lawyer.

According to the journalist, Zaporizhzhia is seeing an increasing tendency with officials to avoid contact with journalists in general and to refuse to provide information on many other socially significant topics.

Elmira said that this is not the first time she has encountered difficulties in obtaining information from the Zaporizhzhia City Council after Regina Kharchenko replaced Anatoliy Kurtev as the Council's secretary/acting Mayor.

"It has been quite difficult to get any comments from City Council representatives lately, because some of them simply avoid journalists. The acting Mayor Regina Kharchenko held a briefing at the start of her appointment in April. After that, it only happened one more time, and there were limits on the timing and the number of questions from journalists. The officials did not hold any more briefings or press conferences, although the public has a lot of questions for the City Council representatives," the 061.ua journalist said.

In early April, the Education and Science Department of the Zaporizhzhia City Council refused to provide Zaporizhia Center of Investigations (ZCI) journalists with information about the the local school meal prices almost tripling. Instead, the journalists were offered to have the Budget Code printed for 1,590 hryvnias. After the backlash, the City Council announced a press conference on child meals and provided journalists with full information free of charge.