The com­ing months may be the last for some em­ploy­ees at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), as Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties (MPU) Mar­vin Gon­za­les says Gov­ern­ment ex­pects progress in re­struc­tur­ing the util­i­ty com­pa­ny.

Dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee’s de­lib­er­a­tion on the $2.8 bil­lion ex­pen­di­ture for the min­istry, Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath high­light­ed Gov­ern­ment’s de­creased al­lo­ca­tion for WASA’s Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Scheme (NIS) con­tri­bu­tions by $25,910,000.

Padarath asked if it meant WASA would have a de­crease in per­son­nel.

Gon­za­les said it was not just NIS con­tri­bu­tions but a re­duc­tion in salaries, Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowances, wages, over­time and all items as­so­ci­at­ed with per­son­nel ex­pen­di­ture.

He said Gov­ern­ment ex­pects progress in the re­struc­tur­ing and is await­ing fur­ther up­dates from WASA’s board of com­mis­sion­ers. He said this was a bud­get­ing ex­er­cise and be­lieves that is where 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.

With Gon­za­les not say­ing that WASA would re­trench work­ers soon, Padarath said he was hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty with his ter­mi­nol­o­gy of progress. Padarath said that a re­duc­tion in NIS con­tri­bu­tions meant few­er peo­ple on WASA’s pay­roll.

To this, Gon­za­les replied: “Of course”.

Padarath said the de­crease meant Gon­za­les was send­ing home WASA em­ploy­ees, but the min­is­ter re­marked that he could not send home any work­ers. Gon­za­les said WASA’s board has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to im­ple­ment the re­struc­tur­ing. He added that he could not re­veal how many em­ploy­ees the re­struc­tur­ing would im­pact, say­ing it would be spec­u­la­tive to do so.

In a me­dia re­lease af­ter­wards, Padarath said the WASA board and Gov­ern­ment were the same, since Cab­i­net se­lects the mem­bers. He ac­cused Gon­za­les of skirt­ing the is­sue but said the in­ten­tion to axe em­ploy­ees was ev­i­dent. He de­scribed it as a cru­el, evil and heart­less at­tack on WASA em­ploy­ees when un­em­ploy­ment was al­ready high.

In a fur­ther com­ment to Guardian Me­dia, Padarath said the al­lo­ca­tion in the last bud­get com­pared to the present shows that half of WASA’s work­force will go home.

WASA: Board to meet
with union month-end

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia mo­ments af­ter Gon­za­les’ state­ment, WASA chair­man Ravin­dra Nan­ga said his team was fi­nal­is­ing the trans­for­ma­tion plan and prepar­ing to meet with the union. There­fore, he said the team will not make any de­ci­sions un­til it com­pletes con­sul­ta­tions with the unions and ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment.

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), Na­tion­al Union for Gov­ern­ment & Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers and Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion rep­re­sent WASA em­ploy­ees.

Cab­i­net charged WASA’s board with de­vel­op­ing a trans­for­ma­tion plan, which it ap­proved a while back. It in­volved a re­struc­tur­ing of WASA and an up­grade of its plant and equip­ment, Nan­ga said. He said the board will up­date Gon­za­les on these items at the end of Oc­to­ber. Cab­i­net ap­proved the pa­ra­me­ters for con­sult­ing with the unions, and Nan­ga said the pro­posed plan would al­so be ready by month’s end.

“As you can imag­ine, there will be a lot of fac­tors in­volved in when the re­struc­tur­ing will take place, and of course, a big part of that will de­pend on how the con­sul­ta­tion with the union goes. As you would be aware, we have our vi­sion for the au­thor­i­ty, which is with­in the pa­ra­me­ters of what was ap­proved by Cab­i­net,” Nan­ga said.

He said the board will con­sid­er the union’s views be­fore mov­ing for­ward and was con­fi­dent it would agree with the pro­pos­als. Nan­ga said this year’s Bud­get showed that WASA was a strain on the na­tion­al trea­sury and could not con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in its cur­rent form. He said while there is crit­i­cism of the pace of the re­struc­tur­ing, he was cross­ing his T’s and dot­ting his I’s re­gard­ing good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices.

“We are mak­ing sure that we are do­ing this prop­er­ly to avoid the union tak­ing in­junc­tive re­lief on the ba­sis that we are not fol­low­ing prop­er pro­ce­dure. There has al­ready been an at­tempt to do so, to try to stop us from putting for­ward the trans­for­ma­tion plan to Cab­i­net. Of course, be­cause of the amount of work we did and the care­ful plan­ning that took place, we were able to suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend that po­si­tion.”

PSA: Anx­i­ety will height­en among work­ers

PSA pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste yes­ter­day said the news com­ing out of Par­lia­ment will gen­er­ate re­newed in­ter­est and anx­i­ety among WASA em­ploy­ees.

“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, where they are not be­ing open and trans­par­ent with the process and al­low­ing our mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion in it,” Bap­tiste said.

He said 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.

How­ev­er, Bap­tiste said the court’s po­si­tion was that WASA was en­ti­tled to for­mu­late and fi­nalise a plan be­fore pre­sent­ing it to the PSA. Since then, the PSA has been wait­ing to get the plan.

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