Trouble brewing over SLT’s internal directory

Sri Lanka Telecom has allegedly made an error by printing an incomplete and erroneous internal directory without a final proof approval from the Quality Assurance Division of the company.

The division received the sample directory for proof reading recently and it was found to be incomplete and lot of errors in the directory. This was pointed out by the head of the Quality Assurance Division in a letter (which is in the possession of The Sunday Times FT) sent to the Administration Division with his comments.

According to the normal procedure, before printing a document, the originator of the document should send the corrected sample back to the Quality Assurance Division for the final proof approval – which was not done in this instance. Union officials say the 1,500 Internal Directories were printed at a private printing press without handing over the task to SLT Publications Ltd which is wholly owned by the SLT. The incomplete Internal Directories have been released recently and trade union leaders complained that the names of several executives of the company have been omitted. SLT Publications (Pvt) Ltd was set up as a subsidiary of SLT to undertake all printing work of the institution. The Joint Trade Union Front has questioned as to why SLT Publications was in the practice of outsourcing printing work of the SLT although it was formed as the company’s subsidiary printing company in December 2006.

A senior official of the SLT Publications told The Sunday Times FT that they are still not in a position to undertake any printing work because they don’t have any printing machines at the moment. He declined any further comment in the issue.