The chairman of the Charity Commissioners says swift changes to the law are needed to enable the public to obtain more information about charities and their activities.At the moment, members of the public can visit the Registry General and ask to see the financial statements for any registered charity — but have no right to obtain any other information.Cummings Zuill told The Royal Gazette: “There are many people in the community who are pushing to make the general information on all charities available to the public.“Right now, it’s [restricted by] the [Charities] Act [1978]. I think it’s something that needs to be reviewed.“We hope that the amendments, when they come, will include that. I’m sure there will always be a confidential correspondence file but all the other information, application [for charitable status], constitution and so on, could easily be made available and most charities, if you called, would let you have that information.”Two organisations — the African Diaspora Heritage Trail Foundation (ADHT) and the Committee of 25 — recently hit the headlines after losing their charitable status.The ADHT, which receives an annual grant from the Department of Tourism, declined to tell this newspaper the reason its status was revoked, though it is understood it is because it did not do sufficient fundraising.It has appealed the decision to the Home Affairs Minister.Mr Zuill said he would also prefer not to comment on the reasons for the loss of status.“They would have got a letter from the Registry General,” he said. “It’s part of the struggles we have as commissioners, that that information is really not available [to the public], because of the Act.”He added of the ADHT: “If they plan to appeal, which is always within their right, maybe they’d just as soon not discuss it, which I think would be the commissioners’ approach as well.”Last month, Home Affairs Minister Michael Fahy revealed that 50 of the Island’s 373 registered charities hadn’t filed financial statements with the Registry General since 2010, despite being required in law to do so within six months of the financial year end.He said five of those charities had questionable financial records but did not name any of the organisations which are not up to date.The 50 delinquent charities had until the end of July to file their accounts.Mr Zuill explained that the Commission met regularly to review statuses, particularly when a new application for status was made or if a status needed renewing.““We had four meetings this month,” he said. “We have a very committed group and we are taking things seriously and times are changing.“We need to go by the law and the law is not a good piece of legislation, so it does need to be amended or changed.”Mr Zuill admitted the commissioners had not always done enough to ensure charities filed current financials.“Perhaps we haven’t been as good as we could have been,” he said, adding that a strengthened Act would help.He said one idea being discussed was to publish applications for new charitable statuses in the Official Gazette.“That may be coming, but at the moment there is no requirement,” he said. “I’m not sure how often they do it. I think it’s probably important to do because there has been this publicity [about delinquent charities] so people need to know who is registered and who isn’t.“There are lots of issues and hopefully we are working hard to sort them out and bring them to the surface.”The other Charities Commissioners are Richard Ambrosio, Gaylynne Cannonier, Scott Stewart, Anthony Francis, Nicholas Warren and Pamela Ferreira.