Appeal Court affirms decisions by RTI Commission on SLT and select employees

Friday, 4 July 2025 01:16 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Court of Appeal Judge R. Gurusinghe yesterday issued three separate judgments affirming decisions of the Right to Information (RTI) Commission with regard to a few personnel of Sri Lanka Telecom PLC (SLT).

The decisions were:

a) Directing SLT to release foreign expenses, travel details etc. of SLT Chief Operating Officer Priyantha Fernando authorised through public funds.

b) Directing SLT to disclose legal fees paid by SLT through public funds to retain lawyers to defend itself before the RTI Commission.

c) Directing SLT to disclose data regarding the interview and selection process in respect of the General Manager position in Cloud Services et al., including panel members, expert assessors, names of candidates who applied, who were selected, who were evaluated etc.

Among other principles, the Court affirmed that if a public authority spends public funds for its high officials, the ‘reasons, performance, and breakdown of expenditure’ cannot be treated as ‘personal information’ but ‘touches the public essence.’

The Court also dismissed the argument that privacy and reputational rights prevented the release of the information and, while citing previous decisions of the Commission, affirms that the Commission, being a quasi-judicial authority, ‘should maintain uniformity in its decisions in similar cases’ and that it cannot be held to have ‘sinister intentions’ in doing so as alleged by SLT.