Kalutara Achriage Dharshani Chrishanthi Herbert v P L B Sarath Manukularatne

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Laura Lau Chin Yui
• Judgment Date: 08 April 2003
• Neutral Citation: [2003] SGDC 78
• Court: District Court (Singapore)
• Published date: 06 October 2003
• Year: 2003
• Plaintiff Counsel: B Uthayachanran
• Defendant Counsel: Vijay Kumar Rai
• Citation: [2003] SGDC 78

1 The Complainant, Kalutara Archarige Dharshani Chrishanthi Herbert ("Ms Kalutara") is a Sri Lankan. She is presently a Singapore permanent resident. She married the Respondent, P L B Sarath Manukularatne ("Mr Sarath") in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on 15 August 2001. After the marriage, the parties returned to Singapore on 19 August 2001. They resided with Mr Sarath's parents at No 36 Jalan Taman, Singapore. Owing to unhappy differences, the parties had ceased to live together since 27 July 2002. There are no children to the marriage.

2 On 3 August 2002, Ms Kalutara lodged a complaint in Maintenance Summons No 4546 of 2002, alleging that Mr Sarath had failed to maintain her since January 2002. On the same day, she lodged another complaint in Summons No 1826 of 2002 seeking a personal protection order against Mr Sarath. At the hearing on 29 November 2002, Ms Kalutara was granted leave to withdraw her summons for a personal protection order. The maintenance summons proceeded for a full trial at the end of which I made an order requiring Mr Sarath to pay Ms Kalutara maintenance of $400 per month on the 1^st day of every calendar month with effect from 1 December 2002. Mr Sarath was further ordered to pay costs fixed at $1,000 to the Director of Legal Aid. In this connection, Ms Kalutara was represented at the trial by Mr B Uthayachanran, to whom the Legal Aid Bureau had assigned her case. Mr Sarath has appealed against the orders made in the maintenance summons.

The positions taken by the parties

3 In her complaint and in her affidavit filed in the maintenance summons, Ms Kalutara claimed maintenance of $2,000 per month for herself. She reduced her claim to $800 per month at the trial. Mr Sarath's contention, in short, was that Ms Kalutara was financially capable of supporting herself and that she did not have needs which could not be met by the income she was capable of earning. Accordingly, he made no offer of maintenance throughout the trial.

Analysis of the evidence

4 After her arrival in Singapore, Ms Kalutara lived with Mr Sarath, his parents and his 2 brothers in the property known as No 36, Jalan Taman, Singapore ("the house"). Mr Sarath's mother claimed that she was the owner of the house which she had apparently, inherited from her mother. On 27 July 2002, Ms Kalutara left the house and has since been staying in rented accommodation. The reason for Ms Kalutara's departure from the house is the subject of her application for a personal protection order which Mr Sarath had contested. Mr Sarath vehemently denied the allegations of family violence and both parties have proffered different versions for Ms Kalutara's departure. In view of Ms Kalutara's withdrawal of her summons for a personal protection order, the court was not required to adjudicate upon the summons. Accordingly, no finding was made on the conduct of the parties. Apart from Mr Sarath's failure to maintain Ms Kalutara, the conduct of the parties during the marriage was not raised at the hearing of the maintenance summons. There being conflicting versions as regards the parties' conduct which are as yet unresolved, it would suffice to state for the purpose of the maintenance summons that the parties had ceased to live together since 27 July 2002 by reason of unhappy differences.

5 Ms Kalutara is 32 years old. She has not been employed since her arrival in Singapore on 19 August 2001. She said that she had completed her GCE 'O' level education in Sri Lanka. As regards Mr Sarath's allegation that she "has completed her education till the level of polytechnic", Ms Kalutara clarified at the trial that she had studied typewriting and English at the polytechnic and that she was issued a certificate, not a diploma, by the polytechnic. She had worked in Sri Lanka as a secretary for about 6 years, a fact that was confirmed by Mr Sarath. After she arrived in Singapore, Ms Kalutara attended 3 short courses on information technology at Sinda and NTUC. She is able to use and operate the computer. For 8 months from January to August 2002, she attended a private secretaries diploma course for which she sat for the examinations in some modules leading to a LCCI/CIE certificate. Ms Kalutara claimed that she did not know whether she had passed the examination as the results were sent to the house and she is no longer living there.

6 From the evidence, Ms Kalutara is not without marketable skills and working experience. Her knowledge and skills in information technology, past secretarial experience and possibly, her recent secretarial qualifications (depending on whether she has passed the examinations) are assets she can count on in securing a secretarial or clerical position. Further, Ms Kalutara is fairly proficient in the English language as she had testified in English at the trial with no problems. Hence, whilst she claims to be unemployed, her earning capacity, as evidenced by her skills and working experience, must be taken into consideration by the court when ordering maintenance (applying section 69(4)(b) of the Women's Charter).

7 On further examining the facts, I cannot exclude the possibility that Ms Kalutara’s current unemployed status could well have been self-induced. The fact that she did not even bother to find out the results of her LCCI/CIE examination from her instructors or the examining authority is indicative of her lack of interest in securing a job commensurate with her skills and experience. Although she asserts that she "tried so many times to get a job", Ms Kalutara has adduced no evidence of her efforts since 27 July 2002. She has not produced any letters of application, rejection letters, job advertisements, newspaper cuttings of jobs that she had applied for or evidence of her alleged registration with "Internet", a job-matching agency. She admitted that she had not registered with the Ministry of Manpower's job placement service. If in fact Ms Kalutara had tried hard to get a job to no avail, it is inexplicable that she has nothing to show for all her efforts. In view of the glaring lack of evidence, it would not be unreasonable to infer that Ms Kalutara had made little or no effort to secure a job following her departure from the house.

8 Ms Kalutara's nonchalance towards employment is further borne out by her rejection of a job offered to her by C K Tang Departmental Store ("C K Tang") prior to her departure from the house on 27 July 2002. Ms Kalutara says that she was offered the position of cashier at C K Tang sometime in mid-July 2002. Ms Ng Yen Ping, human resource executive of C K Tang (“Ms Ng”) testified that cashiers with ‘O’ level qualifications and “without experience” are paid a monthly salary of $855 whilst those “with experience” may be paid more on recruitment. In addition to monthly salary, cashiers are paid for overtime work “on a case to case basis”. C K Tang would issue a letter of appointment only upon the cashier reporting for work and in this case, no letter of appointment was issued to Ms Kalutara. Given that Ms Kalutara would have been paid at least $855 per month and possibly more, depending on experience and eligibility for overtime payments, Ms Kalutara’s evidence that the “highest salary” offered by C K Tang was only $800 per month cannot be true. Accordingly, I find it hard to believe Ms Kalutara’s evidence that she had declined the offer because her father-in-law had prevented her from taking the job as he felt that the salary of $800 was too low. Be that as it may, Ms Kalutara made no attempt to find out if the job was still available after 27 July 2002. Her explanation that she had “no time” because of the pending maintenance and personal protection summonses is but a flimsy excuse as she was only required to work a 5-day week at C K Tang. Even if her father-in-law had forbid her from accepting the job (which I doubt he had), Ms Kalutara might have been gainfully employed at the time of trial had she returned to C K Tang after 27 July 2002. In this connection, Ms Ng had told the court that C K Tang had 2 vacancies for cashiers as of 29 November 2002 (the date of trial).

9 Apart from the offer made by C K Tang, Ms Kalutara was offered the position of computer sales coordinator by Microtec Private Limited (“Microtec”) which Mr Sarath again contended, Ms Kalutara had no reason to refuse. Ms Kalutara explained that she did not respond to Microtec’s offer because she had not applied for the job and had not gone for any interviews with Microtec. She also believed that the job involved sales work which she was not suited for and she was concerned that her services could be terminated within 24 hours, as stated in Microtec’s letter. In my opinion, Ms Kalutara’s belief that this offer may not be a genuine offer is not unfounded and accordingly, I do not propose to place much weight on the offer for the purpose of assessing the quantum of maintenance. I will explain. Goh Poh Joo, one of the directors of Microtec (“Mdm Goh”) is a friend of Mr Sarath’s father. According to Mdm Goh, Mr Sarath’s father had approached her to ask if Microtec could offer Ms Kalutara a job. Mdm Goh’s evidence shows that the position was offered to Ms Kalutara solely on the basis of her curriculum vitae which was provided not by Ms Kalutara herself but by Mr Sarath’s father. Microtec was prepared to pay Ms Kalutara a salary of $1,200 per month without first conducting an interview to assess her abilities, aptitude and suitability for the position. On her part, Ms Kalutara received an offer out of the blue. She knew nothing about Microtec, she was not apprised of the nature of the job, her duties and the business of the company before the offer was made. At trial, Mdm Goh’s description of Ms Kalutara’s intended role in Microtec was vague – she could only say that Ms Kalutara was “to help out in the office...