Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has ad­vised Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste not to min­gle in Gov­ern­ment’s plan for the first phase of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty’s (WASA) ex­ec­u­tive re­struc­tur­ing process.

This comes af­ter Bap­tiste re­vealed plans on Sun­day to file an­oth­er le­gal chal­lenge over WASA’s plan to of­fer ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages as part of its trans­for­ma­tion process.

Bap­tiste raised con­cerns over the ef­fects on the men­tal health of those work­ers who will be af­fect­ed in this phase of the process.

Re­spond­ing to these con­cerns at the Bad Hill Well De­vel­op­ment pro­gramme in To­ba­go yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les re­mind­ed Bap­tiste of his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to unionised work­ers un­der his watch.

“Those work­ers fall out­side of the bar­gain­ing unit. They’re not mem­bers of the PSA, they’re not mem­bers of the NUGFW (Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment & Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers), they are not mem­bers of the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion. Mr Leroy Bap­tiste and they know that, so let us not en­gage in fool­ish­ness be­cause I’m not go­ing to be part of that.”

He re­it­er­at­ed, “The work­ers who are go­ing to be im­pact­ed by the first phase of the trans­for­ma­tion are not work­ers who will fall with­in the bar­gain­ing unit. And when we reach that stage in the man­age­ment struc­ture, then we have giv­en the com­mit­ment, in ac­cor­dance with the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment, that the nec­es­sary con­sul­ta­tion will hap­pen and must hap­pen.

“But please, they know that the ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship of WASA falls out­side of the bar­gain­ing unit and, there­fore, they are not to get in the Gov­ern­ment’s busi­ness.”

Gon­za­les al­so rub­bished claims made by UNC Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark and Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath about the like­li­hood of large-scale lay­offs at WASA.

He not­ed that it was ac­tu­al­ly the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress-led gov­ern­ment that ini­tial­ly be­gan the process of re­struc­tur­ing.

On Sun­day at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the UNC’s head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas, Mark said the UNC had in­for­ma­tion that WASA planned to re­trench be­tween 2,000 and 2,500 of its 5,000 em­ploy­ees.

Gon­za­les clar­i­fied that this was mis­lead­ing.

He said, “To­day they talk about 2,500 work­ers when it is they who told the IDB (In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank) to get ac­cess to $1 bil­lion, that they are go­ing to re­struc­ture WASA and they are go­ing to sep­a­rate 2,500 work­ers. When they can re­spond to that, then I will have a con­ver­sa­tion with them.

“The po­lit­i­cal hypocrisy, this is what I can’t stand with them be­cause it is very nau­se­at­ing at times to have to re­spond to their lies and their imag­i­na­tion and tom­fool­ery they en­gage in on a dai­ly ba­sis.”

He added, “They talk about 2,500 em­ploy­ees to be re­trenched from WASA, as op­posed to the an­nounce­ment I made on the week­end that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to tack­le the is­sue of the trans­for­ma­tion of WASA from a man­age­ment per­spec­tive, be­cause it is the man­age­ment that is go­ing to dri­ve the trans­for­ma­tion to the low­er lev­el.

“So the first phase of the trans­for­ma­tion is the re­struc­tur­ing of the lead­er­ship of WASA. This has been some­thing that we dis­cussed for the last two or three years.”