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Technical Error Shuts Down Moroccan Government Portal Designed for Complaints for More than a Year
15/09/2021
More than a year has passed since the law on the right to access information was enforced in Morocco last March. The government portal for receiving complaints failed to refer these to the National Committee that was created under the same law and entrusted with the task of guaranteeing its application. The question is then why has access to information been obstructed for a whole year?
This investigation reveals that government sectors violated the Access to Information Law in its first year of enforcement in tandem with the declaration of the state of emergency due to the pandemic. This shows the government’s lack of transparency in managing the epidemiological crisis and in managing related procurement deals.
The investigator submitted three requests to the ministries of Health, 7 and 28 September, and Finance, July 2020, but did not receive any response to his queries.
In a judicial precedent, the investigator brought two cases one against the Prime Minister, and the Ministers of Health and Finance before the courts. This marks the first case in which a journalist uses the Access to Information Law in Morocco, by resorting to the Administrative Court to achieve justice.
The investigator exclusively obtained an official report that has not yet been published: This shows that the three requests made by the investigator are among 1,046 out of a total of 2,316 queries that were sent to various government departments through the electronic portal and were later dismissed once the statute on of the legal deadlines attached to them expired. This meant that 45% of the total requests sent through the national portal dedicated to receiving requests to access information remained pending. This comes despite the fact that the law sets clear deadlines to respond positively or negatively along with an explanation, or even to simply extend the deadline.
The report, which was presented to the office of the Prime Minister Saadeddine El-Othmani in early April of last year reveals that around 90% of the complaints of those seeking access to information have not been answered, and this is violation of the law.
Responses to requests for information should be processed within a period that does not exceed twenty working days. In the absence of a response, the applicant may submit a complaint to the head of the institution in question within twenty days following the initial expiration date. This should in turn, be examined, and an answer should be sent out within 15 days. Next, if thirty working days have lapsed without such answer, the applicant has the right to file a complaint to the National Committee.
During the Corona crisis year, there was an increased demand for health-related information This report has confirmed that three ministries, including the Ministry of Health, did not respond to any of the 67 requests it received between March 2020 and March 2021 through the national portal. The 112 requests that were sent to the Ministry of Justice and the 94 requests sent to the Ministry of Equipment, Transport and Logistics were equally disregarded.
The portal registered 2,316 requests addressed to various ministries since its launch March 13, 2020, and until March 11 of this year. Of these 1,270 were processed by providing the required information or by sending a refusal to process the request. The report does not reveal the number of requests that were indeed processed by providing information.
The journey of searching for information in the time of Corona started in the first months of the comprehensive lockdown that started on March 20, 2020. The required information was related to data on the epidemiological situation in the country and about the (procurement) deals of the Ministry of Health to acquire laboratory tests. The lack of response to this request led to judicial action.
On September 6 last year, the investigator filed a request through the national portal asking for data on the Corona virus analyses carried out by private laboratories since there was chatter that these labs “hid test results and did not include them in the database.”
The investigator did not receive any response to his requests when the legal timeline had expired.
During a meeting with parliamentarians on September 17 of last year, the Minister of Health confirmed the reports that some private laboratories were “deceptively” concealing test results.
The ministry did not only conceal information on the private labs analyses, but also withheld data on the purchase deals for rapid tests.
In the same meeting, the Minister of Health denied accusations of corruption in the acquisitions deal of two million units for 2 types of rapid tests with a value of 212 million Dirhams (approximately 24 million US dollars) . The Minister said that $10 price per test unit, was “the lowest price available on the global market.”
The investigator obtained the name of the French company, Biosynex, from which Morocco bought the rapid tests. He also tracked the company’s activities and sales operations regarding the rapid tests. According to an ARIJ investigation that tracked the Covid funds in Tunisia, the same company sold 100,000 units of the same test to Tunisia for only $5/unit.
The Access to Information Law calls for the early declaration of deals; Article (10) stipulates the obligation to publish “the results of public procurement deals, their winners and their value.” In reality, the Ministry of Health did not publish the details of the deals and refused to provide us with information about them.
On September 28, 2020, the investigator requested details on those deals through the national portal, but the ministry chose to ignore it, and the deadline for responding to the complaint addressed to the minister expired without any response.
The investigator was informed that the National Committee has taken note of his complaint in its efforts to complete the procedure for accessing the information without receiving a response, but on February 2, 2021, he was informed that he had the right to appeal before the Administrative Court.