SAHA Wins Prestigious Award

The dedicated work of SAHA’s Freedom of Information Programme (FOIP) has been honoured by the presentation of a prominent Award. The Golden Key Awards (Openness & Responsiveness Awards) are awarded to individuals and organisations that have demonstrated exemplary work in promoting openness in the public sector, have nurtured positive sentiment towards transparency, have set up enabling organizational systems and procedures that promote proper compliance with the provisions of PAIA and have shown conscious respect of the national aspiration for an open, transparent and people-centred democracy.

SAHA is thrilled to have received a Golden Key Award for the Best Usage of PAIA. The award is an endorsement of FOIP’s strategy of taking its program in a new direction to build the capacity of the Community-based sector to engage with the Act as well as continuing existing efforts to hold public and private bodies accountable. Key public interest cases that FOIP has taken on, such as the recent Presidential Pardons case, and the FOIP Capacity Building Project were referred to when considering SAHA for the award.

SAHA thanks the organisers for ensuring a successful event and congratulates the other individuals and organisations who received an award. Other Golden Key Award recipients include the Limpopo Provincial Department of Public Works, Amelda Crooks (Information Officer for the South African Police Service), BioWatch and the City of Johannesburg.

The Golden Key awards ceremony was held on Monday 29 September 2008 at the Eskom Convention Centre in Midrand. The event was hosted jointly by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) and the Open Democracy Advice Centre (ODAC).

For further details please contact Charlotte Young.