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The once highly vaunted Right to Information Commission now short-staffed, fund-less
View(s):By Sandun Jayawardana
The Right to Information Commission (RTIC) is facing a crisis owing to a multitude of issues that have placed a severe strain on its day-to-day functioning. Problems include a crippling shortage of staff, delays in filling two vacancies of Commission members and the lack of an Independent Fund for the Commission.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) hailed the RTIC as a governance role model in its 2023 Governance Diagnostic Report and called upon the Commission to be strengthened and supported. Nevertheless, the problems have steadily gotten worse.
Of particular concern is the shortage of legal staff to handle the RTIC’s workload. In January 2024, the Commission had an approved staff cadre of 26 with just one legal officer and one senior research officer, along with four legal assistants. Last year, the Commission had written to the Ministry of Finance and the Management Services Division pointing out its difficulties and requested for a Head of Legal (Prosecutor), three legal officers and four legal assistants to meet the heavy legal workload. While some staff positions were subsequently increased, the scheme of recruitment has yet not been approved for senior legal staff, the Sunday Times learns.
The lack of legal staff has been a huge impediment to the RTIC, which has to deal with anywhere between 50-75 appeals sent to the Commission per week, sources said. About 50 appeals are heard on each hearing day of the Commission, with about 40 appeals filed against the Commission’s orders in the Court of Appeal mainly by Public Authorities. The Court has handed down notable judgments upholding the decisions of the Commission and emphasising the duty on the part of key state entities including the Sri Lanka Parliament and several state banks, to release information. There are also several prosecutions pending in the magistrate’s court filed by the Commission against public authorities that have failed to conform to its decisions.
Even now, out of the approved staff cadre of 35 for the RTIC, only 17 positions have been filled.
Staffing shortages are not new for the RTIC. The matter was highlighted from years back with the 2023 Annual Report noting that several requests to recruit ‘urgently needed staff to carry out the requirements of its statutory mandate and the provision of adequate salaries’ had been to no avail.
The RTI Act stipulates that the Commission shall consist of five persons appointed by the President upon recommendation of the Constitutional Council with three commissioners coming through nominations, respectively one attorney-at-law of eminence or a legal academic nominated from the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL), one nominee from publishers, editors or media persons and one nominee from civil society.
Presently, the Commission comprises attorney-at-law Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena (nominee of BASL), attorney-at-law Jagath Liyana Arachchi (nominee of civil society) and former public servant AM Nahiya.
To compound matters, two positions in the five-member RTIC are vacant, including the position of chairperson. One position has been vacant since January while the other fell vacant in March. This has also severely hampered the Commission’s activities given that the RTI Act stipulates that the quorum for any meeting of the Commission should be three members, meaning all three current commissioners must be present for appeal hearings to be conducted.
The position of the RTIC that fell vacant in January was the member who, as per Section 12 (1) of the RTI Act, is nominated by the organisations of publishers, editors and media persons. A recommendation out of several nominations had been forwarded by the Constitutional Council to the President in mid-March, the Sunday Times learns.
In late March, following the sudden resignation of the RTIC’s Chairman, former Supreme Court Justice Upaly Abeyratne, the CC called for applications to fill the second vacancy. Speaker Jagath Wickramaratne told the Sunday Times on Friday that the CC had received a large number of applications for this position and that a committee was currently in the process of scrutinising these applications. Shortlisted candidates will then be called for interviews.
The shortage of staff at the Commission has resulted in delays in appeal hearings, the RTI’s Director General K.D.S. Ruwanchandra said. “We have also been unable to properly update our database on hearings owing to the shortage. We asked for funding to develop our own system for this but have not received the funding either,” he disclosed.
Another issue for the RTIC is that while Section 16 of the RTI Act states that the Commission should have its own Fund, this is not currently operationalised. The last time the RTIC had its own funding was in the 2018 Budget, when it had its own line item. Since then, however, funding for the Commission has been gazetted under the budget allocations of the Ministry of Media. Thus, the RTIC has to forward its budget allocations to the Ministry of Finance through the Media Ministry. Section 13 of the RTI Act gives the Commission the power to appoint its own staff but that power has also been affected by the 2018 gazetting.
Having to rely on the Media Ministry for this purpose is “extremely inconvenient,” noted Mr. Ruwanchandra. Moreover, given that the Ministry is a public authority coming under the RTI Act and can be cited as a respondent in appeals before the Commission, this is a very unsatisfactory arrangement, he pointed out.
| Make RTIC great again, Karu’s call Pointing out that an acute shortage of legal and administrative staff as well as delay in filling two vacancies in Sri Lanka’s five-member Right to Information Commission has gravely impacted the country’s anti-corruption drive, former Speaker and leader of the National Movement for Social Justice (NMSJ) Karu Jayasuriya has asked President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the Government to urgently rectify the issue. Given ‘the Government’s recent statement that details of the defence agreement reached between the Governments of India and Sri Lanka can be accessed via the right to information’ this responsibility cannot be ignored, Mr. Jayasuriya said. Noting that Sri Lanka’s RTI regime has been internationally recognised as one of the three top information regimes in the world, bringing honour to the country, he observed that, ‘at a time when the President has taken a stand against bribery and corruption, strengthening the RTI Commission will significantly aid those efforts. The failure to do so risks echoing the 2004–2005 period, when the then Government weakened democratic governance by delaying appointments to independent commissions. We sincerely hope that the current Government will not follow that path.’ | |
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