In more than eight years since the adoption of the Access to Information Law, few were the investigative reporters, civil society representatives or ordinary people who had requested official information of public character and actually got an answer. This problem was discussed on Friday in Chisinau at a roundtable titled “Access to Information: Rights and Obligations”, Info Prim Neo reports. The participants in the roundtable said that although most of the public institutions assigned functionaries to handle inquiries and disseminate official information they don't always do their job well. Furthermore, the access to the registers containing public information is still a problem. In addition, very few public institutions make the information about their activities available to the general public, in particular, information on the opening hours and audience hours. Few government agencies have developed web pages which would make the access to information a lot easier. Another object of criticism was the response times of the public institutions. Journalists said that the worst situation is in villages and district centers. Despite relative progress in the field, the gap between the authorities' promise to improve access to information and actual performance is yawning, said Vasile Spinei, the chairman of the Acces Info Center. “Poor laws containing only rights and no obligation for the civil servants are continuing to appear”, he added. Presidential advisor Valeriu Balaban reiterated the need to establish a correct and constructive relationship between government spokespersons and media representatives. He praised the PR specialists of the public institutions, but said that there were still a lot of shortcomings in their ability to speak to the media.