TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT, 1999 REPUBLIC OF TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO ACT NO. 26 OF 1999 [L. S.] AN ACT to give members of the public a general right (with exceptions) of access to official documents of public authorities and for matters related thereto. [Assented to 4th November, 1999] ENACTED by the Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago as follows:PART I PRELIMINARY 1. This Act may be cited as the Freedom of Information Act, 1999. 2. This Act comes into force on such date as is fixed by the President by Proclamation. 3. (1) The object of this Act is to extend the right of members of the public to access to information in the possession of public authorities by (a) making available to the public information about the operations of public authorities and, in particular, ensuring that the authorisations, policies, rules and practices affecting members of the public in their dealings with public authorities are readily available to persons affected by those authorisations policies, rules and practices; and (b) creating a general right of access to information in documentary form in the possession of public authorities limited only by exceptions and exemptions necessary for the protection of essential public interests and the private and business affairs of persons in respect of whom information is collected and held by public authorities. (2) The provisions of this Act shall be interpreted so as to further the object set out in subsection (1) and any discretion conferred by this Act shall be exercised as far as possible so as to facilitate and promote, promptly and at the lowest reasonable cost, the disclosure of information. 4. In this Act "applicant" means a person who has made a request in accordance with section 13; "designated officer", in relation to a pubic authority, means the person referred to in section 7 (1)(a) (vi); "document" means information recorded in any form, whether printed or on tape or film or by electronic means or otherwise and includes any map, diagram, photograph, film, microfilm, video-tape, sound recording, or machine-readable record or any record which is capable of being produced from a machine-readable record by means of equipment or a programme (or a combination of both) which is used for that purpose by the public authority which holds the record; "exempt document" means a document referred to in Part IV; "exempt information" means information the inclusion of which in a document causes the document to be an exempt document; "Minister" means the Minister of Government to whom responsibility for information is assigned; "official document" means a document held by a public authority in connection with its functions as such, whether or not it was created by that authority, and whether or not it was created before the commencement of this Act and, for the purposes of this definition, a document is held by a public authority if it is in its possession, custody or power; "personal information" means information about an individual, including (a) information relating to the race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex or marital or family status of the individual; (b) information relating to the education or the medical, psychiatric, psychological, criminal or employment history of the individual or information relating to financial transactions in which the individual has been involved; (c) any identifying number, symbol or other particular assigned to the individual; (d) the address, telephone number, fingerprints or blood type of the individual; (e) the personal opinions or views of the individual except where they relate to another individual; (f) correspondence sent to a public authority by the individual that is implicitly or explicitly of a private or confidential nature, and replies to that correspondence that would reveal the contents of the original correspondence; (g) the views or opinions of another individual about the individual; and (h) the individual's name where it appears with other personal information relating to the individual or where the disclosure of the name would reveal other personal information about the individual;