Page:Promotion of Access to Information Act 2000.djvu/19

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Government Gazette, 3 February 2000
No. 2085219

Promotion of Access to Information Act, 2000
Act No. 2, 2000

Severability

28. (1) If a request for access is made to a record of a public body containing information which mayor must be refused in terms of any provision of Chapter 4 of this Part, every part of the record which—

(a)

does not contain; and

(b)

can reasonably be severed from any part that contains,

any such information must, despite any other provision of this Act, be disclosed.

(2) If a request for access to—

(a)

a part of a record is granted; and

(b)

the other part of the record is refused,

as contemplated in subsection (1), the provisions of section 25(2), apply to paragraph (a) of this section and the provisions of section 25(3) to paragraph (b) of this section.


Access and forms of access

29. (1) If a requester has been given notice in terms of section 25(1) that his or her request for access has been granted, that requester must, subject to subsections (3) and (9) and section 31

(a)

if an access fee is payable, upon payment of that fee; or

(b)

if no access fee is payable, immediately,

be given access in the applicable forms referred to in subsection (2) as the requester indicated in the request, and in the language contemplated in section 31.

(2) The forms of access to a record in respect of which a request of access has been granted, are the following:

(a)

If the record is in written or printed form, by supplying a copy of the record or by making arrangements for the inspection of the record;

(b)

if the record is not in written or printed form—

(i)

in the case of a record from which visual images or printed transcriptions of those images are capable of being reproduced by means of equipment which is ordinarily available to the public body concerned, by making arrangements to view those images or be supplied with copies or transcriptions of them;

(ii)

in the case of a record in which words or information are recorded in such manner that they are capable of being reproduced in the form of sound by equipment which is ordinarily available to the public body concerned—

(aa)

by making arrangements to hear those sounds; or

(bb)

if the public body is capable of producing a written or printed transcription of those sounds by the use of equipment which is ordinarily available to it, by supplying such a transcription;

(iii)

in the case of a record which is held on computer, or in electronic or machine-readable form, and from which the public body concerned is capable of producing a printed copy of—

(aa)

the record, or a part of it; or

(bb)

information derived from the record,

by using computer equipment and expertise ordinarily available to the public body, by supplying such a copy;

(iv)

in the case of a record available or capable of being made available in computer readable form, by supplying a copy in that form; or

(v)

in any other case, by supplying a copy of the record.

(3) If a requester has requested access in a particular form, access must, subject to section 28, be given in that form, unless to do so would—

(a)

interfere unreasonably with the effective administration of the public body concerned;

(b)

be detrimental to the preservation of the record; or

(c)

amount to an infringement of copyright not owned by the State or the public body concerned.

(4) If a requester has requested access in a particular form and for a reason referred to in subsection (3) access in that form is refused but access is given in another form, the fee charged may not exceed what would have been charged if that requester had been given access in the form requested.

(5) If a requester with a disability is prevented by that disability from reading, viewing or listening to the record concerned in the form in which it is held by the public body