TANZANIA CATEGORY 2: REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION The following questions were sent to the Ministry of Water and Irrigation: 1. Your Ministry has been vested with the mandate to make sure that water, as the source of life, is available to all people; how do common citizens access information useful to them from your office? Do they need to pay for information? 2. Shortage of water has been the order of the day in most places in Tanzania (for example in the Lindi Region, and especially Lindi town), it is a dream to have clean water - people are using salted water from the wheels. What is the long term plan of the Ministry to make sure that water is available to all people, especially in rural areas? 3. Residents of Dar es Salaam are complaining that DAWASCO associates with business people to sell water using car trunks, while denying them their right to have tap water in their homes. What do you say about this? 4. There is an influx of bottled water supplied by various industries and some seem to be of low quality. How do you associate with the Ministry responsible for proper industrial standards to make sure that water products are meeting the required standards? 5. Your Ministry runs a number of multi-million water projects; what is your plan to make sure that you have zero corruption in your daily undertakings? n = 20 Yes No Partial • 1. Is there an official designated to take and respond to information requests? 2. Did the institution reply within 21 days? • 3. Did the institution respond to the request for information? • 4. Does the authority publish their procedures for dealing with information requests? • 5. Did the institution provide all of the information requested? • 6. Did the institution provide written reasons for the refusal of information? • 7. Did the institution disclose information about its operations, budgets, structure etc. • 8. Did the authority provide information without questioning the aims and motivations of the applicant? • 9. Did the institution acknowledge your request for information within 7 days? • 10. Was the information received clear and understandable? • Additional Information When called, the Registry informed the researcher that there is a department responsible for dealing with information requests and the information request has been sent to said department which will call the researcher back. Nothing happened thereafter. Total Score: 1/20 5. National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Category 1: Website www.nbs.go.tz The NBS website is very well-packed with information which reflects the work they are doing. It provides information on world population, country population (both mainland and Zanzibar), GDP, population projection, and CPT on a monthly basis. It is in both English and Kiswahili which means a large audience can easily access this information. Different social media sites including Facebook, and Twitter are linked to this website. Most of the information is updated as the nature of the institution is to provide current statistics on various issues. 81