The Whistleblower Protection Act 2010 has a weakness, where information that is already protected under existing laws cannot be disclosed, lawyer Syahredzan Johan said today.

This is described in a provision under Section 6 of the Act, where it says a person may disclose improper conduct "provided that such disclosure is not specifically prohibited by any written law", Syahredzan explained.

"This means that if the information is protected or prohibited from disclosure by any written law, for example the Official Secrets Act (OSA), and it is disclosed to the authorities, whistleblower protection cannot be afforded to that person," he told a forum titled 'Whistleblowers should be protected' at the Institute of Integrity Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur.

Whatever information that can be disclosed by a whistleblower to the authorities, Syahredzan said, has to be something that is not protected under the OSA or any other written law.

This is a weakness, he opined, as anything can be protected under the OSA.

However, another speaker at the forum, the KPI officer to Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Paul Low, Shuhairoz Mohamed Shukeri, said the Whistleblower Protection Act and OSA do not contradict each other.

"They are in line. There is no contradiction. They support each other," she said when met by reporters after the forum.

Earlier, during the forum, Shuhairoz said it was not necessary to have physical evidence to report improper conduct under the Whistleblower Protection Act.

"They must have reasonable knowledge of an improper conduct. No need for evidence. It is enough to be able to say, ‘I believe this thing happened’.

"That is enough to start investigations into whatever is believed to have happened and for whistleblower protection to be given to that person," Shuhairoz said.

12,527 gave information in 2015

Another speaker, chief assistant director of the Legal Affairs Division of the Prime Minister's Department, Akhzailina Md Akhir, revealed some data in relation to the Whistleblower Protection Act.

The total number of people who have disclosed information under the Act from 2010 to 2015, she said, is 55,287.

In 2015 alone, 12,527 people disclosed information under the Act, Akhzailina added.

However, only a total of 397 people have actually been given protection under the Act.

"We investigate everything that is reported, we don't close the cases immediately," she said.

If, in the course of their investigations, they discover that the information is not genuine or that it was lodged by an accomplice of the improper conduct, the protection is not given to them.

"Accomplices cannot be given protection as a whistleblower under the Act," Shuhairoz later stressed.

This is because they usually only report these things in an attempt to get legal immunity under the Whistleblower Protection Act, she said.