Sri Lanka Telecom PLC (SLT) employees welcome the government’s action to appoint a new chairman and reconstitute the Board of Directors to re-invigorate the state owned telecom service provider steered into a loss making- debt ridden entity by former Chairman Kumarasinghe Sirisena , trade unions said.
Issuing a statement Sri Lanka Telecommunication Engineers Union(TEU) expressed the belief that new Chairman and Board of Directors will take necessary steps to navigate SLT to prosperity.
However the TEU vehemently protested against Eng. Ranjith Rubasinghe who has been appointed as an independent director to the Board of SLT.
He is an employee of SLT and a member of engineers union. He currently works as the CEO of SLT subsidiary [Sri Lanka Technological Campus (SLTC)].
Therefore, TEU states this appointment violates the current ‘Code of Best Practice on Corporate Governance’ issued jointly by The Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka when Dr. Nalaka Godahewa was the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2013.
According to the section A.5 of “Code of Best Practice on Corporate Governance”: For a Director to be deemed ‘independent’ such director should be independent of management and free of any business or other relationship that could materially interfere with or could reasonably be perceived to materially interface with the exercise of their unfettered and independent judgment.
Further Mr. Rubasinghe has been accused of various corrupt practices when he was holding the post of Mobitel CEO.
Several complaints had been lodged at FCID against Rupasinghe over his conduct as the
CEO of Mobitel. It was in the light of such allegations that the SLT director board decided to suspend Mobitel CEO Ranjith Rubasinghe pending an inquiry, Union leaders said.
(LI)