Critics accused the companies of making too much money and some even accused the whole system as a scam. It's a scam since the road concessionaires are guaranteed "traffic flows" i.e. if the number of vehicles using the toll drops below a certain level, the government will pay the difference. The government on their side argues that the companies are making normal profits and that the contracts are not one-sided.

So who do you believe? The truth is Joe Public cannot really make an assessment since the actual concession is top secret. Although this sort of contract has no national security implications, it is considered a secret by both the government and the company.

In many Western countries, any individual can request to see the contract under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI). In fact, the FOI Act is a standard in most European countries, North America, Australia and New Zealand. Most of the requests under FOI deals with individual information held by government departments.

People apply for the FOI to check that the government is holding correct information about them and to make sure there are no mistakes. FOI is also used to make sure that the government does not use improper information to abuse its power.

In Malaysia, almost all government documents are secret. In fact, it is impossible for anyone to check what sort of information is held about you by the government. There is no procedure or mechanism in place.

The worst part is that if the government information about you is wrong, there is no way of correcting the information.

For example, some Chinese and Malay names are very common. There is every reason to think that there can be mistakes in the information held about you.

Imagine if some financial institutions report you as a bad risk and the information found its way into some government departments. The government now thinks you are not credit worthy. What can you do?

The answer is nothing!

Hence, we really do need a FOI Act to be adopted here in Malaysia. The government need not worry about its secrets - many FOI have exclusion clauses which allows the authorities to hold back the information if it damages the country.

What we need essentially is a mechanism for Joe Public to check if the information collected about him is right and proper and gives him a chance to correct any faulty data.

We also need the FOI in order to allow Joe Public access to government documents so that he or she is in a position to make informed decisions.

In this age, the trend is towards transparency and more openness, and not the other way around.

By holding back information, in the long run, it just makes the authorities look bad, creating the impression that they have something to hide or worse, corruption is involved.  If there is one lesson to be learnt in the fight against corruption, it is that more transparency leads to less corruption.

This has been shown to be true in so many other countries. People and institutions become corrupt because they think they can get away with it.

We need the FOI in order to asses for ourselves if all the mud thrown against the government has any authenticity. Are toll operators really scammers? I can't answer that question until I see the contract.

An FOI is a win -win situation for all. The government will gain credibility and the people will have more confidence in the political system.