PARLIAMENT There have been 31 cases of government secrets being leaked from 2010 to 2015, Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Azalina Othman Said has said.

However, only four out of 15 people investigated under the Official Secrets Act have been charged in court between 2011 and 2015, Azalina said.

The four were charged under Section 8 of the OSA, which carries a jail sentence of between one and seven years.

Azalina said this in a written reply to two parliamentary questions yesterday.

Anuar Manap (BN-Sekijang) had asked how many individuals had been charged under the OSA in the past five years.

Wan Mohammad Khair-il Anuar Wan Ahmad (BN-Kuala Kangsar) asked about the number of leaks in that period, and how the government planned to deal with the issue.

To this, Azalina said the government has prepared short-term and long-term frameworks to deal with leaks of state secrets.

The government, she said, had identified three important elements that need to be improved on to protect classified information, that is, the human element, technology and processes.

The OSA recently became a hot topic after attorney-general Mohamed Apandi Ali said he had plans to strengthen the Act.

Apandi said he wants those who leak government secrets, and the journalists who protect the source of such leaks, to be sentenced to life imprisonment and 10 strokes of the cane.

He proposed the amendments in order to deal with what he claimed to be a surge in leaks of classified documents.