No tolerance for persons leaking private data of individuals – VP

…says strong penalties will be dished out for data protection breaches

Whether it’s the data collected from the $100,000 cash grant process or medical data, Vice President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo has indicated a zero tolerance for any breaches to the Data Protection Act and has assured that private data of citizens will be safe.
During his most recent press conference, Jagdeo addressed one of the more prevalent fears around the $100,000 cash grant distribution… that of data breaches. Acknowledging that the programme’s rollout has not been without its flaws, Jagdeo nevertheless assured that persons should not be worried about their data in the hands of the Government.
“Some of them deliberately stoke… in many cases bad planning on the ground, to distribute the cheques. And has led to some difficulties among people. And that’s something we need to work on improving as a Government. And a lot of the officers who are doing this, need to do this with a bit more heart. They deliberately stoke skepticism about it.”

“Because they want to do that for political purposes. They think by creating an issue around its distribution, that you can negate the benefits of people receiving the grant. And somehow convert that, to a political benefit. Its all-public data. I don’t see a single bit of information there that anyone can use,” the Vice President said.
The Vice President assured that there will be zero tolerance and strong penalties for any unauthorised release of private data. He pointed out that this applies for any data, whether its data collected from the cash grant registration, medical data or data collected from the safe country programme.
“Nevertheless, the Ministry shall not and will not release that data to anyone. And that is why we passed the Data Protection Act. Because not just there for public information generally, it is going to be important for when, with all of these cameras that we’re putting up around the country.”
“That, along with the Privacy Act, will be important to safeguard people’s rights in the country. Also, the programme to develop electronic medical records. We don’t want people’s medical records to be available to anyone. There would be strong penalties,” Jagdeo added.
In August 2023, the Data Protection (Amendment) Bill 2023 was passed in the National Assembly to protect the privacy of personal data. The Act contains stiff penalties for any breaches by data controllers, that is the persons who determine the manner and purpose of which personal data is processed.
Additionally, it is a criminal offence for such officers to operate without being registered or without nominating a representative, carrying a fine of $10 million- or two months’ imprisonment.
Like data controllers, data processors must also be registered and when necessary, appoint a representative established in Guyana. A data processor is a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which processes personal data on behalf of the data controller.
When he presented the bill for its final reading in Parliament, Attorney General (AG) Anil Nandlall had noted that this piece of updated legislation had been long overdue, given the shift to e-governance and digitalisation.
The Data Protection Bill was created to regulate the collection, keeping, processing, use and dissemination of personal data. It sets a statutory framework, moving away from the current construct of the country’s legislation, which does not safeguard against rights to data protection.
Then, in 2024, the Government passed the Open Data Bill No. 13 of 2024, which required that public authorities maintain an electronic data registry containing all data assets created, collected, under the control or direction of, or maintained by that public authority.
Prime Minister Brigadier (Ret’d) Mark Phillips had explained that the Bill would complement the Data Protection Act and the Digital Identity Card Act, which were both passed the previous year. (G3)