An individual from the Badulla District has applied for the post of Health and Nutrition Officer that had been posted in a Government Gazette notification of 2018.
However, this individual has not heard from the Badulla District Health department about the examination results that should follow the Gazette notification or of the recruitments that were made as per the announcement.
It is around the same time that he learns about the Right to Information Act through a workshop conducted by Sri Lanka Press Institute with USAID under its Strengthening Democratic Governance and Accountability Project (SDGAP).
Accordingly, he applies an RTI to Badulla District Health Department requesting to know the details about the examination and the recruitment process. He formulates questions on the application with the knowledge he gained at the Right to Information Workshop.
The application was submitted in November 2018. It has been five months since he submitted the following questions:
- Was an examination conducted on a specified date?
- Has any information related to the past application been published last year?
- If not, what reasons caused information to not have been published?
The shocking response that was received stated that although information requested was available, no information could be provided as the request was made in Tamil and that the application form was incomplete.
As per the Right to Information Act an Information Officer cannot deny requests on the grounds that he does not understand the language in whi9ch the request is made. The applicant expressed his dismay over the ignorance of the RTI Officer who failed to provide information i one of the official languages in the country.
When SLPI coordinators last spoke with the applicant, he mentioned that he was going ahead with the appealing process.
His disappointment was more with the fact that no government official who could handle Tamil language applications were appointed in the government departments.This was a dire issue.
The applicant’s plan is to file an RTI with regard to this issue that violates the national language policy. It is embraced by all government organizations and requires all official information to be transmitted in the two official and national languages; Sinhala and Tamil.
The applicant’s RTI on this issue will request information about the number of officers who are trained as information Officers who are qualified in speaking Tamil-speaking and the number of training programmes conducted to equip the officers with the language qualification.
The applicant said that because of the knowledge on RTI he gained at the workshop he is now able to understand complex issues as these and that he is confident to question the acts of the public bodies and demand justice without shying away.
This update was prepared by participants of the Information and Communication Training Workshop conducted by the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI) through a grant funded by the United States Agency for International Development through the Strengthening Democratic Governance and Accountability Project Activity.
“The contents of this post are the sole responsibility of SLPI and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.”
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