News
Chronic understaffing crippling RTIC; misreporting impacts quasi-judicial appeal function
View(s):By Ranjith Padmasiri
In a statement issued on Thursday, the Right to Information Commission (RTIC) has warned against the potential amendment of Sri Lanka’s globally praised Right to Information Act (RTI Act), emphasising that a combination of ‘chronic understaffing’ and misreporting is negatively impacting its quasi-judicial appeal function, which is carried out despite serious institutional difficulties, including the absence of a chair and one commissioner for several months during 2025.
The RTIC has explained that revision of the Commission’s Rules on Fees and Appeal Procedure (duly published in Gazette Extraordinary No. 2004/66, 02.03.2017) does not require parliamentary approval under Section 42 of the RTI Act. The clarification comes in the wake of its Director General K.D.S. Ruwanchandra earlier informing the media that revision of fees for releasing information to reflect present-day costs requires only a revised gazette notification and not an amendment of the RTI Act.
Issued ahead of the ten-year anniversary (2026) of the enactment of the RTI Act, the statement highlights that Sri Lanka’s RTI regime has enabled thousands of citizens to obtain information from state and non-state bodies and that dilution of the information right would reverse painfully won gains and undermine Article 14A of the Constitution. Principles of public transparency emphasised by the five-member RTIC have been affirmed by the appellate courts and noted by UNESCO, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has acknowledged the measures taken by the RTIC to foster ‘an (embryonic) culture of transparency among public authorities’ (Governance Diagnostic Report, September 2023).
However, the RTIC has expressed serious concern regarding the chronic understaffing of its office. The RTI Act divides responsibilities between two entities, an independent RTIC with the primary responsibility of hearing appeals and the nodal ‘implementing’ agency, namely the Ministry of Health and Mass Media (Section 2). While both must harmoniously work together to maximise the effectiveness of the Act, the RTIC must be independent from public authorities which are summoned before it as parties to appeals.
Specifically, the independent recruitment of staff and a dedicated fund (Sections 13 (3) and 16) secure the RTIC’s financial independence, without which there is no functional independence. However, these statutory safeguards have been ignored by successive governments. No dedicated fund has been allowed to be operated. Though a separate line item was allocated to the RTIC in the National Budget in 2017, this was thereafter taken away. Placing budgetary allocations under the line item of the nodal agency undermines the RTIC’s financial and functional independence, it is stressed.
The RTIC has been functioning with a skeleton staff, one legal officer and two legal assistants (later increased to three) to handle an increasing caseload of appeals. In forwarding requests for staff to the Ministry of Finance through the nodal agency, the process has been inexplicably delayed, in one instance by eight months.
Meanwhile, further clarifying a response by the Ministry to a parliamentary question tabled in the Hansard of 23rd October 2025, it is pointed out that the Office of the RTIC, under the hand of the Director General, had informed the Ministry by letter dated October 15th 2025 that 1157 appeals had been concluded (out of 1306 appeals received by its Office) by September 30th 2025.
Some 308 appeals had been ‘heard and not yet concluded’ or ‘adjourned’. This statistic had, however, been wrongly translated to ‘unattended’ in certain newspaper reports, which had further inaccurately claimed that the RTIC’s budget had been ‘reduced’. Clarifying the misreporting, which the RTIC sees as a deliberate interference with its quasi-judicial appeal function, the statement points out that ‘adjournment’ for justifiable reasons, including the request of parties, the legal complexity of the subject matter, etc., is part of the normal hearing process of any tribunal.
Typically, adjourned appeals are either resolved during the remainder of the year or brought over to the next year to conclude hearings. For example, by November 15, 2025, the number of adjourned appeals had decreased to 244. Correspondingly, the number of appeals received by the Office of the RTIC had increased to 1538, and concluded appeals to 1304. There has been no ‘reduction’ in the number of appeals being filed.
The statement also clarifies that budgetary allocation in the response of the Ministry to the parliamentary question is not the RTIC’s budget, which has not been ‘reduced’ and is publicly available at https://www.rticommission.lk/web/images/pdf/Budget/Annual-Budgetary-Allocation-and-Expenses.pdf. Despite a Right of Reply being forwarded to the relevant newspapers, that was not carried, the RTIC has said.
The best way to say that you found the home of your dreams is by finding it on Hitad.lk. We have listings for apartments for sale or rent in Sri Lanka, no matter what locale you're looking for! Whether you live in Colombo, Galle, Kandy, Matara, Jaffna and more - we've got them all!