Was there go­ing to be a con­sul­ta­tion with the unions be­fore the re­struc­tur­ing of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty?

This was the ques­tion posed by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark yes­ter­day, dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ week­ly press con­fer­ence held at the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s of­fice at Charles Street in Port-of-Spain.

Sen­a­tor Mark said the Gov­ern­ment’s next move re­gard­ing work­ers at the com­pa­ny ap­peared to be shroud­ed in se­cre­cy, as both Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les did not specif­i­cal­ly men­tion any plan in their Bud­get de­bate con­tri­bu­tions last week.

The Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter on­ly con­firmed that staff cuts loomed when asked about re­duced fund­ing for NIS con­tri­bu­tions for WASA.

“It took the UNC through the alert­ness of the MP for Princes Town to go through the sub items and no­tice that the NIS con­tri­bu­tion which was in 2022/2023 $64 mil­lion. They es­ti­mat­ed for 2024 at 25 mil­lion ... They tried to slip it in, with­out in­form­ing the unions. I haven’t heard a state­ment from one of the unions thus far. So, they have been caught flat-foot­ed as it re­lates to the in­ten­tion of the Gov­ern­ment,” said Mark.

The Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor said while there were is­sues to be ad­dressed, the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to fol­low cer­tain steps to cor­rect the sit­u­a­tion.

“No­body can ar­gue that if you have an over-staffing prob­lem, you can­not ad­dress it. But ad­dress it prop­er­ly, not by stealth, not through se­cre­cy, not by stab­bing the work­ers in their backs. By not en­gag­ing the trade unions who rep­re­sent the in­ter­ests of the work­ers.

“You have to con­sult with peo­ple be­fore you take these ac­tions. The unions are not beg­ging for con­sul­ta­tion they are en­ti­tled to be part of the con­sul­ta­tive process. If you are go­ing to re­trench peo­ple, if you say that your staff, the staffing lev­els is above what is re­quired. If you have a re­struc­tur­ing plan that must be part of a dis­cus­sion with the rel­e­vant unions so that when your plan is fi­nal­ly an­nounced, you have buy-in ... And if it does not go prop­er­ly, then you can go to the courts, the In­dus­tri­al Court or you can take ac­tion,” he said.

Re­gard­ing the pro­posed crime talks be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion, Mark ac­cused the Prime Min­is­ter of shift­ing the goal­post.

“Our po­lit­i­cal leader and Leader of the Op­po­si­tion is com­mit­ted to meet­ing and treat­ing with a crime wave in our na­tion. That is why we have asked for clar­i­fi­ca­tion be­cause the Prime Min­is­ter seems to be shift­ing the goal­posts from one spot to an­oth­er when it suits his in­ter­ests and fan­cies. We have sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion from him on a num­ber of is­sues,” he said.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said he did not wish to re­spond to Mark’s com­ments. He said, how­ev­er, that WASA’s chair­man, Ravin­dra Nan­ga, had con­firmed in the Guardian’s re­port on Sat­ur­day, Oc­to­ber 14, that con­sul­ta­tions with the union rep­re­sent­ing WASA work­ers would be done at the end of the month.