An­na-Lisa Paul

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke has chal­lenged Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les to fire the Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), Lennox Sealy, claim­ing he is un­fit to lead the cash-strapped State agency.

He made the call dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the PSA Head Of­fice, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Duke ac­cused Sealy of be­ing on a per­son­al cru­sade to dis­cred­it him and re­duce his pro­fes­sion­al achieve­ments and po­lit­i­cal as­pi­ra­tions.

He claimed that Sealy had writ­ten “a bold and dar­ing” let­ter to him on March 9, ask­ing him to re­sign from WASA.

“It dis­turbed my peace and def­i­nite­ly shook my state of mind.”

Hav­ing re­fused to re­spond by the March 26 dead­line set by Sealy, Duke said a sec­ond “more con­cise and cun­ning” let­ter on April 14, plain­ly stat­ed that, “My work in the PSA did not serve the in­ter­ests of WASA…and he (Sealy) fur­ther went on to at­tack my po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests, to say that it is in con­flict with the Civ­il Ser­vice Act.”

In the sec­ond let­ter, Duke was told to re­spond with­in three days or face ter­mi­na­tion from WASA.

Duke said it was on­ly yes­ter­day that he re­ceived a third let­ter from Sealy in which it was con­firmed that Duke had been grant­ed time off with­out pay, for in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions pur­pos­es from De­cem­ber 2020 to De­cem­ber 2024 had been grant­ed, pur­suant to Ar­ti­cle 37 of the Col­lec­tive Agree­ment.

Duke qui­et­ly cel­e­brat­ed as he re­vealed that Sealy had al­so with­drawn the let­ters from March 9 and April 14.

Re­gard­ing the min­is­ter, Duke said, “I call up­on him...to re­voke the ap­point­ment forth­with of Lennox Sealy as he is un­wor­thy to lead the WASA.”

Dur­ing the si­mul­ta­ne­ous broad­cast on his var­i­ous so­cial me­dia plat­forms, Duke said, “He (Sealy) is mak­ing bad mis­takes that is tor­ment­ing the lives of peo­ple and I will ask my at­tor­ney to pur­sue this as it did cause me pain and suf­fer­ing, and caused my fam­i­ly un­due dis­tress…to see where it ends up based on the law.”

In­di­cat­ing that Sealy nev­er is­sued an apol­o­gy, Duke said he should do the “right thing and re­sign, and if he doesn’t, I am call­ing up­on the min­is­ter to grow some what­ev­er and re­voke his ap­point­ment. Such a man is a shame and an em­bar­rass­ment for this coun­try.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said, “When I learnt about it, I ad­vised him (Sealy) that these mat­ters are based on es­tab­lished in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices and should on­ly be en­gaged with up­on care­ful and dili­gent le­gal coun­sel.”

Gon­za­les said Sealy took his ad­vice and “is now guid­ed by Coun­sel on these is­sues.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said Sealy had been ad­vised to con­tin­ue fo­cus­ing on WASA’s trans­for­ma­tion and re­struc­tur­ing process.