Senate Majority Leader Joel Villanueva on Friday, March 24, said there is a need for Congress to open the discussion on the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill.
The discussion, Villanueva reasoned out, is to further set the parameters into the information that the public could gain access to.
Villanueva maintained that transparency is a big factor in keeping the people’s faith in the government.
He recalled that ‘’we filed the Freedom of Information Act since the 12th Congress in the House of Representatives up to now in the Senate with Senate Bill No. 933, or the “People’s Freedom of Information Act.”
Villanueva said that it is always a balancing act between upholding the right of the people to information on matters of public concern, and the State’s duty to safeguard information that is, by its nature, confidential or sensitive, as declared by laws, rules and regulations, and jurisprudence.