KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les is con­demn­ing the hir­ing of “in­flu­encers” at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), claim­ing the em­ploy­ees were re­cruit­ed by the Gov­ern­ment with­out qual­i­fi­ca­tions or a trans­par­ent hir­ing process.

Gon­za­les al­leged that some WASA em­ploy­ees were hired as part of “po­lit­i­cal pay­back” and are be­ing paid to “ma­lign” and “den­i­grate” crit­ics of the UNC-led Gov­ern­ment rather than im­prove wa­ter ser­vices and in­fra­struc­ture.

“If any one of these peo­ple are qual­i­fied for the jobs that they are cur­rent­ly be­ing paid to do in­side WASA, if they ap­ply like every oth­er cit­i­zen who is qual­i­fied for the job, if they have been in­ter­viewed and there is a trans­par­ent process, and if they would have gone through that and got the jobs, I have ab­solute­ly no prob­lem with that.

“What makes this very scan­dalous is the fact that none of them are qual­i­fied for the jobs that they are be­ing paid to do. None of them went through an in­ter­view process. None of them went through a trans­par­ent process. As a mat­ter of fact, what is hap­pen­ing is po­lit­i­cal pay­back.

“And what do they do? Are they fix­ing pipes?...They were placed in po­si­tions in­side the au­thor­i­ty, re­ceiv­ing thou­sands of dol­lars every sin­gle month, not to en­sure that peo­ple get a re­li­able sup­ply of wa­ter, but to ma­lign, den­i­grate and stink up the name of any­one who dares crit­i­cise the UNC Gov­ern­ment and all of their trans­gres­sions,” he added.

He said the is­sue re­flects long­stand­ing po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence with­in WASA, point­ing to stud­ies con­duct­ed by the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), which he said found the au­thor­i­ty had been over­staffed by be­tween 2,800 and 3,000 work­ers for years.

He not­ed that even dur­ing the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion be­tween 2010 and 2015, a re­struc­tur­ing re­port signed by then-WASA chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Gan­ga Singh rec­om­mend­ed re­duc­ing the au­thor­i­ty’s work­force by up to 2,800 em­ploy­ees.

Ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les, ap­prox­i­mate­ly $700 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed for a vol­un­tary sep­a­ra­tion of em­ploy­ment (VSEP) pro­gramme, but de­spite the ex­er­cise, some work­ers lat­er re­turned to the au­thor­i­ty be­fore the 2015 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Gon­za­les said that af­ter be­com­ing min­is­ter in 2020, a Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed sub­com­mit­tee re­viewed WASA and con­clud­ed the au­thor­i­ty need­ed to be de­politi­cised and man­aged by qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als in or­der to sur­vive and im­prove ser­vice de­liv­ery.

He said the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion de­vel­oped a trans­for­ma­tion plan with sup­port from the IDB aimed at mod­ernising the au­thor­i­ty and im­prov­ing wa­ter sup­ply sys­tems.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of dis­man­tling that plan short­ly af­ter re­turn­ing to of­fice.

At a post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar pub­licly tore up the re­struc­tur­ing plan for WASA.