Data Protection Act Under Scan

The ICT ministry is willing to collaborate to bring necessary amendments to the Data Protection Act so that the Mauritian legal framework is recognised on an international level. This was stated by the minister of Information and Communication Technology, Tassarajen Pillay Chedumbrum, who was speaking at a workshop on Mauritius data protection accreditation with the European Union (EU) held on Thursday at Domaine Les Pailles.

Attorney general Yatin Varma and the head of EU delegation, Alessandro Mariani, were also present. “Our society is ever more dependent on ICT now. Whilst it is an indispensable source of economic growth, it also raises the need for more effective protection of our citizens.

The key focus in the current review of the Data Protection Act is to modernise our data protection laws in order to face the growing challenges of new information technologies and globalisation,” said the ICT minister.

He added that data protection is fundamental in the sense that it concerns the identity and personal information of a person. It is a sine qua non condition for trust in e-Health, e-Government and e-Commerce, and also for trust among states whilst exchanging sensitive data.

“We are actively pursuing efforts with the European authorities to ensure that our Data Protection Act has the status of ‘Pays Adequate’. It will certainly strengthen our credibility among our major European markets with regards to BPO activities,” underlined Chedumbrum.

The attorney general also highlighted the importance of protecting human rights of all citizens. “Social networking sites and new technologies prompt new challenges.

We therefore need to show more caution to protect human rights,” stated Varma.