RTI Commission orders ICTA to release remuneration info of staff and consultants 

The Right to Information Commission of Sri Lanka has instructed the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) to release information relating to the names, designations, basic salaries and allowances paid to the organisation’s staff in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

In addition to this, the ICTA was also directed to disclose information on the salaries and allowances paid to consultants and its organisational chart as of 3 July 2021. 

The directive was issued in response to an appeal filed by a citizen, identified as Gamini Karunaratne who had requested the information but was provided with merely a website link by the public authority. Karunaratne in his appeal had claimed the information provided by the ICTA in response to his application was ‘incomplete, misleading and false’. 

The Commission noted that the ICTA had responded to Karunaratne by providing the website link with information on salary scales and staff designations up to May 2021. That web link had been given as a result of a Commission decision in that same year on an appeal filed by yet another citizen requesting information on the salary particulars of ICTA staff. The Commission held that though a portion of the appellant’s information request was responded to, a significant part of that request was not satisfied through the provision of the link. 

“In that context, we determine that the initial response dated 3 August 2021 of the information officer of the Public Authority to the instant information request is unsatisfactory and not in conformity with the duties and obligations imposed upon the information officer by the RTI Act. 

“By not responding to the appeal filed to him on 3 August 2021, the designated officer also did not act according to the mandatory duties imposed upon him/her under Section 31 of the RTI Act. Though the Public Authority has attempted to excuse this default by stating that, this was due to ‘operational challenges’ at the Public Authority during that time due to a ‘high turnover’ this is not an explanation that can be accepted by this Commission on the spirit and the letter of the RTI Act,” the Commission said delivering its decision. 

“It is the bounden duty of ICTA to follow procedures laid down in the RTI Act to the letter, particularly as close to seven years have passed since its enactment,” the Commission observed.

ICTA objected to the release of names of staff and consultants vis a vis payment of salaries and allowances stating that this constitutes personal information and that Karunaratne, a former employee of the ICTA had filed a case before the Labour Tribunal against the organisation. 

The Commission dismissed these grounds on the basis that several earlier decisions of the Commission had taken the stand that information on salaries and allowances is not personal information but is instead general institutional information that must be disclosed. Accordingly, the Commission has given the ICTA till 24 May to disclose the information.