Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les has con­demned the per­son who record­ed the now vi­ral video show­ing a WASA work­er asleep be­hind the wheel of a marked com­pa­ny ve­hi­cle in traf­fic, say­ing they should have at least checked to see if they were ok first. 

In a Face­book post the min­is­ter lament­ed the per­son nev­er tried to find out whether the work­er was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a med­ical emer­gency or was sim­ply ex­haust­ed from an overnight shift. In­stead, he said, they chose to “score cheap points, rile up the pub­lic against the work­er and the Au­thor­i­ty or just en­gage in pure mis­chief.”

“The facts are dif­fer­ent from what was at­tempt­ed,” Gon­za­les said. He al­so ex­pressed re­lief that “the work­er is safe with his fam­i­ly” and that “it was not a fa­tal ac­ci­dent.”

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion yes­ter­day, call­ing the mat­ter se­ri­ous. “We take this mat­ter se­ri­ous­ly and have ini­ti­at­ed a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent,” WASA said in a state­ment. While ac­knowl­edg­ing that many em­ploy­ees work de­mand­ing shifts, WASA reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to safe­ty and pro­fes­sion­al­ism, adding that any be­hav­iour vi­o­lat­ing its pro­to­cols will be “ad­dressed prompt­ly and ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.”

The video, which does not spec­i­fy a lo­ca­tion, shows a man film­ing a WASA van parked in the road with the en­gine run­ning. It ends be­fore re­veal­ing whether the dri­ver was awok­en.

For Gon­za­les, the video rep­re­sents a larg­er is­sue. He called for “more re­spon­si­bil­i­ty” and “com­pas­sion in every­thing we do,” ar­gu­ing that so­cial me­dia at­ten­tion should not take prece­dence over civic du­ty. “Des­per­ate­ly look­ing for at­ten­tion on so­cial me­dia and aban­don­ing our hu­man or civic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is not who we are or what we stand for as a na­tion,” he said. “It can­not be on how much ‘likes’ ‘views’ or ‘shares’ we re­ceive on so­cial me­dia.” He urged cit­i­zens to re­mem­ber the val­ues in the Na­tion­al An­them and Na­tion­al Pledge as they work to­ward build­ing a bet­ter coun­try.