Jakarta – A group of non-governmental organizations warned the government and lawmakers Wednesday to give a bill on freedom of information higher priority than one regarding state secrecy.

The NGOs, including Indonesian Human Rights Watch (Imparsial) and the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation, said the bill on state secrecy was progressing more quickly.

They said clauses in the state secrecy bill could be accommodated in the freedom of information bill, whereas if they were passed as two different bills they would overlap.

The NGOs also said the state secrecy bill should emphasize ways to regulate information, rather than delineating types of information.