"Chetverta Vlada" wins lawsuit against enlistment office over withheld data on salaries in first instance court

Illustration by the IMI

The first instance court has judged in favor of the online media outlet "Chetverta Vlada" in their lawsuit against the Territorial Staffing and Social Support Center (TSC) in Rivne oblast, which refused to provide journalists with data on the management's salaries, reports the media outlet.

On September 6, the Rivne District Administrative Court fully granted the claim by "Chetverta Vlada" journalist Valentyna Paniuk and found the Rivne Oblast TSC's refusal to provide her with information on the 2023 salaries of the management unlawful.

The court obliged the regional TSC to process the journalist's query again, taking into account the legal assessment provided by the court in the ruling.

The TSC can appeal the judgement until October 6.

Previously

In January 2024, following the scandalous dismissal of the Rivne TSC director, the journalist submitted a query asking to provide information on the 2023 salaries of its management. The TSC responded to the query with a refusal, which was signed by Ivan Pavliuk, the head of the Rivne Oblast TSC.

At first, the journalists appealed this reply to the Office of the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights. However, after the Commissioner's response, they received another refusal from the TSC, justified as follows: "The disclosure of the requested information may harm Ukraine's national security interests."

"How data on the salaries of TSC officials can harm national security was not explained," writes "Chetverta Vlada".

The media outlet notes that the Commissioner stopped defending the journalists' right to information after that. The Rivne oblast representative of the Commissioner for Human Rights, Oleksandr Korniychuk, told the journalists in his reply that their rights had been restored, even though no information had been provided. Then the "Chetverta Vlada" journalist Valentyna Paniuk challenged the refusal in court.

Recently, "Chetverta Vlada" won a lawsuit against the Enforcement Service Department of the Ministry of Justice.