The ANC will request that work on the contentious Protection of Information Bill be allowed to continue in coming days, though the lifespan of the committee drafting the legislation expires on Friday.

Cecil Burgess, chairperson of the ad hoc parliamentary committee drafting the bill, said he would ask Speaker Max Sisulu to extend the deadline for the committee to report to the National Assembly.

The lifespan of the committee has been extended several times after the bill triggered a storm of protest from journalists, rights activists and legal experts who described it as a bid to muzzle the media and return to apartheid-style state secrecy.

Former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils weighed in, calling for it to be sent back to the drawing board to remove clauses that could undermine freedom of expression.

Though the ruling party has made considerable concessions, there remains a chasm between its insistence that the state should retain vast powers to classify information, and the opposition view that the scope of the bill be narrowed down to matters of intelligence and national security.

Burgess said he would inform the committee on Friday whether Sisulu had agreed to let it continue its work until the National Assembly meets. Only the legislature has the power to re-appoint the committee, but the issue has been bedevilled by a cancellation of a sitting that was scheduled for Thursday.

"I will have an informed position tomorrow [Friday]," he said.

Since the committee resumed its work this month, there has been repeated debate over whether MPs needed a list of all the organs of state that would, as the bill stands, have the power to classify information.

The ANC has rejected an opposition call for a schedule to be drawn up, with Burgess saying this was asking to counting "the grains of sand in the Sahara".

Dene Smuts from the Democratic Alliance retorted that this was precisely the problem, and would see the bill enshrine an "unconstitutional and uncontrollable" situation where far too many entities have sine 1996 been filing far too much information as top secret.

The committee on Thursday received a submission from the Institute for Democracy in Africa (Idasa) that listed 1001 organs of state to which the bill would apply.

These include all government departments, municipalities, universities and state-owned enterprises, right down to the Johannesburg Zoo.

Idasa said this was the case because clause three of the bill states that it applies to all organs of state.

These are defined by section 239 of the Constitution as "any department of state or administration in the national provincial or local sphere of government" plus any institution exercising a function in terms of the Constitution or a public function.

Burgess rejected a call by the opposition for the list to be debated on Thursday, saying this would happen "in due course".