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The Congress of South African trade Unions welcomes the decision by ANC MPs to extend the 24 June deadline to complete drafting the Protection of Information Bill. COSATU hopes that the extra time will be used to re-examine the problematic clauses of the Bill which could conflict with Clause 16 of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
In particular the parliamentary ad-hoc committee needs to examine the genuine concerns from civil society that the provisions of the bill could be abused to cover up crime, corruption and misuse of funds by allowing officials to classify the evidence of this as secret. Whistleblowers could then be intimidated by the threat of lengthy prison sentences for exposing classified information even when it is evidence of crime which it is clearly in the public interest to expose.