‘No State Institution Can Hide How Public Money Is Spent On Public Officials’ – Court Of Appeal Orders Costs On Sri Lanka Telecom For Challenging Information Commission Decisions

The Court of Appeal has dismissed three appeals filed by Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) challenging three orders of the Right to Information Commission, further ordering legal costs to be paid by SLT and stating that no state institution has the right to conceal the manner in which public funds are spent on public officials in describing that as ‘private information’.

The Court declared that SLT had unwisely disregarded the directives of the Right to Information Commission, which is an authority with quasi-judicial powers, to release information of significant public interest and had moreover challenged the fact that the Commission had been uniformly consistent in its decisions. The Court said that the Commission had followed its own principle in previous cases in ordering SLT to release information regarding the interview and selection of a candidate to a senior position which it had every right to do as a quasi-judicial body.

The Commission decisions were in response to appeals filed to the Commission by G. Surendra and D.J. Wijewardena, who served as Deputy General Managers of Sri Lanka Telecom when their information requests were rejected by SLT.

SLT appealed against the Commission decision to the Court of Appeal citing the Right to Information Commission as respondent. President’s Counsel Kaushalya Navaratne appeared for SLT. The appeals were dismissed by the Court.

Recruitments of public officials are by public funds and the State must be transparent and accountable, the Court said.

Accordingly, the Court of Appeal ordered the release of the relevant information as ordered by the Information Commission. The judgments were issued by a bench of judges comprising Court of Appeal Judge Ratnapriya Gurusinghe and Dr. Sumudu Premachandra.

Apart from asking for information on the selection of Manager, Cloud Services of SLT, In addition, former Deputy General Manager G. Surendran had requested information on the money spent on air tickets purchased for foreign trips undertaken by the Chief Operating Officer of the complainant company for various purposes from 2010 to 2019 which SLT had refused to disclose.

The Right to Information Commission had ordered to release that information and SLT had filed another petition challenging that order in the Court which was dismissed. The Court of Appeal ruled that state authorities and responsible officials must be conscious about transparency and accountability in the performance of their duties and responsibilities and that the public has the right to know detailed information about any expenditure made by a state authority or its senior officials.

On that same basis, the Court also dismissed an appeal filed by SLT against an order of the Information Commission directing SLT to disclose the amount of legal fees paid by SLT to counsel to defend SLT in cases before the Commission, which had been asked for by the former employees of SLT. The judges ruled that legal fees is not privileged or personal information and that if an aggregate amount is disclosed by SLT in its annual report, there is no bar to disclosing the breakdown.

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