THE Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) has rapped the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) for what it said is the agency’s failure to respond to queries made under the Access to Information (ATI) Act.

But NEPA said JET’s queries were not being made in accordance with the prescriptions of the Act.

Among the issues about which the environmental lobby group has made requests are:

. animal attractions on the island;

. mining operations; and

. the granting of permits for the respective activities.

“You just don’t get the responses. I made a request in September, and wanted to know the number of dolphins at Dolphin Cove, both facilities, and the size of the enclosure,” said Christine O’Sullivan, a marine mammal specialist with JET. “We got a response in December, telling us they could tell us the number of animals, but not the size of the enclosures because it would fall under ‘impeding a business’ or whatever.”

Added O’Sullivan: “In the letter, they didn’t give us the number of dolphins. We wrote back saying that we do not agree with the reason and that we didn’t get the number.”

The environmental regulatory authority insisted, however, that requests were not made in accordance with the Act.

“They come with it over and over again. The ATI provides for us to supply particular documents to persons who have applied,” said Zadie Neufville, the acting communications manager with NEPA. “The Act provides for us to facilitate their access to the information required. So if you ask us for a document that is in existence, then I can go and supply that document.”

Added Neufville: “JET refuses to understand that they should be asking for official documents, and not pieces of information pulled from various documents that we cannot provide.”

Checks with the ATI unit at South Odeon Avenue confirmed Neufville’s assertion that the Act provides for access to documents, entailed within which are information people wish to get their hands on rather than on singular responses to individual questions.

Meanwhile, JET’s legal director, Danielle Andrade, has expressed concern over the slow pace at which they were being responded to by the agency.

“I don’t know why, (but) we have been having difficulty with NEPA in getting information from them under the ATI Act,” Andrade told the Observer.

The situation, she said, was so bad that they were having to appeal to the five-member ATI tribunal, in a bid to ensure they get their hands on documents dealing with three of their range of requests. The requests being appealed are:

. permits for mining in Jamaica;

. the 2006 monitor reports at Dolphin Cove; and

. the application of a new captive facility on the island.

“From the database, I can see there are an additional six or seven requests made to NEPA, and for which we have not had information,” added Andrade.

Neufville has, in the meantime, accused JET of requesting “irrelevant information”.

“.They ask us, for example, to provide a copy of a permit for stingrays. The Wildlife Protection Act does not list stingrays,” she said. “The Wildlife Protection Act speaks specifically to animals that are endangered or unique, meaning that they occur nowhere else except in Jamaica. If that is the case, we would be giving permits for something that you don’t require a permit for.”

Neufville claimed that attempts to assist JET were often greeted with ingratitude.

“We have made overtures. I am on the phone every day to their lawyers to explain we don’t have this for this reason or we don’t have that for that reason. They believe we are trying to stonewall them,” she said. “We have tried. We give them what we can under the Act.”

Andrade said, however, that the problem was that there were no proper mechanisms in place at NEPA to facilitate the processing of requests.