An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) is not pleased the Gov­ern­ment did not con­sult with it on the re­struc­tur­ing of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing last Fri­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les an­nounced that over the com­ing months, he ex­pects progress in re­struc­tur­ing the util­i­ty com­pa­ny.

Gon­za­les said this was a bud­get­ing ex­er­cise and be­lieves that is where the Gov­ern­ment can save costs.

“It is be­lieved that in 2024, a lot of strides and progress will be made in re­struc­tur­ing the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty. It is ex­pect­ed that we can have some cost sav­ings here. We are not sure, but the de­crease in the con­tri­bu­tion is a re­sult of the sav­ings we ex­pect to have un­der the line item of salaries and Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance, wages, and per­son­nel ex­pen­di­ture,” Gon­za­les said.

NUGFW pres­i­dent gen­er­al James Lam­bert said the union, which rep­re­sents 1,800 dai­ly-rat­ed WASA work­ers, had to find out via the me­dia, which he said is not ac­cept­able.

“Be­fore any pro­nounce­ments were made of what the in­ten­tions were in the com­ing months, the union would have liked to have dis­cus­sions with the rel­e­vant par­ties be­cause we have been wait­ing for the re­struc­tur­ing of the dai­ly-rat­ed sec­tion of WASA for the longest while. They have start­ed and nev­er com­plet­ed it. We knew they were done re­struc­tur­ing with the month­ly paid work­ers,” Lam­bert told Guardian me­dia yes­ter­day.

He claimed that WASA has gone out of con­trol, es­pe­cial­ly un­der the new man­age­ment, which the union has writ­ten to or­gan­ise meet­ings.

“No law and or­der, they do what they like. We know the in­ten­tions un­der this Gov­ern­ment is to ex­tin­guish every union in this coun­try, but we will con­tin­ue to fight this nar­ra­tive that this Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion wants to ped­al,” the NUGFW pres­i­dent gen­er­al lament­ed.

On Sat­ur­day, Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste told Guardian Me­dia that the news com­ing out of Par­lia­ment will gen­er­ate re­newed in­ter­est and anx­i­ety among WASA’s month­ly paid em­ploy­ees, which the union rep­re­sents.

“In this re­struc­tur­ing of WASA ex­er­cise, our mem­bers are ex­treme­ly con­cerned, ex­treme­ly wor­ried, peo­ple’s lives are hang­ing in the bal­ance. For what­ev­er rea­son, the em­ploy­er, WASA’s man­age­ment and, by ex­ten­sion, the Gov­ern­ment, is treat­ing this is­sue in a games­man­ship man­ner. They are not be­ing open and trans­par­ent with the process and al­low­ing our mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion in it,” Bap­tiste said.

He not­ed that WASA’s re­struc­tur­ing is a ma­jor con­cern to the ex­ec­u­tive, re­call­ing that it at­tempt­ed to get WASA to com­mit to meet­ing and deal­ing with the re­struc­tur­ing be­fore sub­mit­ting its plan to Cab­i­net.

Bap­tiste said he met WASA’s man­age­ment on a sep­a­rate is­sue last week and told them of his un­der­stand­ing that they had a fi­nalised plan that the PSA was yet to re­ceive.

Bap­tiste said WASA claims it will hold back on the re­struc­tur­ing un­til meet­ing with the PSA, yet the 2024 Bud­get al­ready has a re­duced al­lo­ca­tion.

He in­di­cat­ed that it shows WASA al­ready has a con­crete plan for its fu­ture.