KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les yes­ter­day slammed his suc­ces­sor, Bar­ry Padarath, over the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to scrap the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion’s Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) trans­for­ma­tion plan.

A day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced the move at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Red House, Gon­za­les called a me­dia con­fer­ence at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day to ad­dress the is­sue.

Not­ing that Padarath was part of a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) which had made rec­om­men­da­tions for the trans­for­ma­tion of WASA since 2021, Gon­za­les point­ed to the fact that 34 se­nior WASA em­ploy­ees were be­ing tar­get­ed as part of the new UNC plan for the util­i­ty.

“This is one of the ma­jor rec­om­men­da­tions of that Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee which com­prised of none of than Mr Bar­ry Padarath, as he was then a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Princes Town, who is now the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and who wit­nessed a cha­rade yes­ter­day (Thurs­day),” Gon­za­les said.

Re­spond­ing to Padarath’s promise that thou­sands of WASA jobs are now se­cure, Gon­za­les de­cried the new Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion, say­ing he be­lieves re­turn­ing to the old man­age­ment struc­ture will not save but rather cost the au­thor­i­ty more mon­ey.

“They (UNC) are all di­a­bol­ic liars who in­tend to lie to the pop­u­la­tion every day ... The strides that we have made to im­prove the lev­el of cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go wher­ev­er you are, we are go­ing back and back again, where cor­rup­tion will reign in the au­thor­i­ty once more,” Gon­za­les said.

“I want to warn Bar­ry Padarath that you have start­ed on the wrong foot. You are be­hav­ing like a wa­jang ... Gov­er­nance is not about bac­cha­nal. ... It is not about jhan­jat. It is not be­hav­ing like a wa­jang every sin­gle day. You need to sit qui­et­ly. Lis­ten to your ad­vi­sors and con­duct your­self in an ho­n­ourable way.”

On Thurs­day, Padarath claimed the bold move to re­scind WASA’s trans­for­ma­tion plan on­ly tar­gets 34 top se­nior man­agers with salaries bal­loon­ing over $100,000 with perks.

When asked Gon­za­les about those salaries, he claimed on­ly WASA CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day earns that much.

“From my un­der­stand­ing, the on­ly po­si­tion that the ba­sic salary was $100,000 or so was the CEO po­si­tion and that was made pub­lic in the Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go...That was ap­proved and ne­go­ti­at­ed by the CPO (Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer) be­cause the CEO came from out­side of the au­thor­i­ty. He was em­ployed, and to re­cruit the best per­son for the job we had to put for­ward a salary pack­age that would have at­tract­ed the best.”

When it comes to Hal­l­i­day, Gon­za­les ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence, say­ing un­der this new ad­min­is­tra­tion, Hal­l­i­day now has to an­swer to ju­nior WASA em­ploy­ees. He al­so al­leged that sus­pend­ed WASA em­ploy­ees are now back at the au­thor­i­ty.

Gon­za­les said, “Ask him (Padarath) about Je­van Joseph. Ask him who is Kr­ish­na Per­sads­ingh. Two ju­nior mem­bers of staff of the au­thor­i­ty and now the CEO has to re­port to them and now I’m be­ing told that oth­er per­sons who were sus­pend­ed from the au­thor­i­ty for cor­rupt prac­tices in the past, dur­ing that 2010 to 2015 pe­ri­od, are now re-en­ter­ing the au­thor­i­ty un­der this Gov­ern­ment.”

But in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse last evening, Padarath said he nev­er agreed to the trans­for­ma­tion of WASA.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone, Padarath said, “The po­lit­i­cal blows that he (Gon­za­les) re­ceived on April 28 is do­ing some­thing to his mind ... We nev­er agreed to the trans­for­ma­tion plan be­cause the trans­for­ma­tion plan meant send­ing home WASA em­ploy­ees. It meant putting the man­age­ment of WASA in the hands of a se­lect few amount­ing to over $70 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly and there­fore there was no re­al plan in terms of de­liv­er­ing wa­ter.”

When asked about the ju­nior em­ploy­ees Gon­za­les claimed were now giv­ing or­ders to the CEO, Padarath evad­ed the ques­tion.

How­ev­er, fight­ing back on this claim, Padarath said, “The for­mer min­is­ter is play­ing smart with fool­ish­ness. The HR (Hu­man Re­sources) de­part­ment is re­spon­si­ble for the ad­min­is­tra­tion of em­ploy­ees at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty. There has been no such move, at least none has been com­mu­ni­cat­ed to me through WASA, with re­spect to any of those al­le­ga­tions.”

Coun­ter­ing with al­le­ga­tions of his own, Padarath claimed that a WASA em­ploy­ee had as­sist­ed a PNM mem­ber in se­cur­ing a con­tract on March 17.

Padarath said, “This is a des­per­ate man. A des­per­ate man at­tempt­ing to clutch at straws. He must tell the coun­try why a PNM cam­paign man­ag­er walked away with $3 mil­lion in con­tracts just be­fore the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.”

But con­tact­ed on this claim, Gon­za­les said un­less Padarath can re­veal the names of the em­ploy­ee and the cam­paign man­ag­er, he will not be “bait­ed by his games and fool­ish­ness”.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Hal­l­i­day for a com­ment on the rev­e­la­tions made by Gon­za­les.

How­ev­er, he re­fused to re­veal the salaries of any of the af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees.

Hal­l­i­day said, “At this junc­ture, it would be pre­ma­ture to com­ment on spe­cif­ic de­tails, in­clud­ing con­trac­tu­al or per­son­nel mat­ters. Rest as­sured, any ad­just­ments to roles, re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, or or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed re­spon­si­bly and trans­par­ent­ly to af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees and the pub­lic as nec­es­sary in due course, with re­gard for due process and fair­ness.”

Asked about the 34 po­si­tions in jeop­ardy, Hal­l­i­day promised to ad­here to the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to re­scind the plan and said it would be done with min­i­mal dis­rup­tion of op­er­a­tions.

Hal­l­i­day said, “The au­thor­i­ty re­mains firm­ly com­mit­ted to its man­date of im­prov­ing wa­ter sup­ply and ser­vice de­liv­ery for all cit­i­zens. While ex­ter­nal per­spec­tives may vary, WASA’s fo­cus re­mains on ex­e­cut­ing its strate­gic pri­or­i­ties in the best in­ter­est of the pub­lic. Re­gard­ing the re­struc­tur­ing process, we ac­knowl­edge the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion and will ad­here to all di­rec­tives while en­sur­ing min­i­mal dis­rup­tion to our op­er­a­tions. Our pri­or­i­ty is to main­tain sta­bil­i­ty and con­ti­nu­ity in ser­vice de­liv­ery. As for our staff, we val­ue the con­tri­bu­tions of every team mem­ber and will man­age any tran­si­tions in ac­cor­dance with es­tab­lished poli­cies and pro­ce­dures.”

When asked about Gon­za­les’ claim that sus­pend­ed em­ploy­ees were re­turn­ing to the util­i­ty, Hal­l­i­day did not re­spond.

Ap­peal for re­ten­tion of ex­ist­ing projects

War of words aside, Gon­za­les is al­so plead­ing with Per­sad-Bisses­sar not to stop on­go­ing projects that he said had ad­vanced the wa­ter sup­ply and pro­duc­tion na­tion­wide.

Dur­ing the me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said un­der the trans­for­ma­tion plan, over 200 wa­ter sup­ply projects were suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed.

Gon­za­les said, “In the Pe­nal area, I kicked off a project with a ma­jor pipeline to im­prove the sup­ply of wa­ter to the peo­ple of Pluck Road. I am ad­vised that this project is al­most over and once it is com­plet­ed, cost­ing the tax­pay­ers of this coun­try over $25 mil­lion, in the heart of UNC con­stituen­cies, I am ask­ing that this project be com­plet­ed so that the peo­ple of Pluck Road and San Fran­cique and all of these com­mu­ni­ties can once again see an im­prove­ment in their sup­ply of wa­ter.”

He al­so asked that the present WASA Op­er­a­tional Con­trol Cen­tre, the re­struc­tur­ing of some in­ter­nal process­es and a not-yet-launched WASA app not be halt­ed.

Gon­za­les added, “Do not sac­ri­fice the ef­forts we have made be­cause you have en­tered in­to some se­cret pact with the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion. A se­cret pact that has noth­ing to do with an im­prove­ment in the sup­ply of wa­ter to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go… I am ask­ing you, Madam Prime Min­is­ter.”