Shal­iza Has­sanali

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has de­nied the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) will soon be send­ing home 135 man­agers as part of the au­thor­i­ty’s trans­for­ma­tion and re­struc­tur­ing plan.

Re­spond­ing to al­le­ga­tions raised by Ca­roni Cen­tral MP Arnold Ram that the necks of 135 WASA man­agers were on a chop­ping block, Gon­za­les said, “The UNC con­tin­ues to demon­strate that their par­ty is a cesspool of naked lies, con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and fab­ri­cat­ed scan­dal.”

Gon­za­les said the UNC op­er­a­tive who brought him­self “to ped­dle these the­o­ries should go check their men­tal health.”

Speak­ing at a UNC press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Ram said the PNM was on a mis­sion to de­stroy all the State-run in­sti­tu­tions “to have a scratch and dent sale” for their friends and fi­nanciers.”

He said, “It seems this is what they are plan­ning to do with WASA. It is no se­cret that some of the PNM big fi­nanciers are in­to wa­ter. Their work­ers are speak­ing ....they are talk­ing about some­thing called Massy wa­ter.”

Ram called on Gon­za­les to say if there was any truth to the work­ers’ claims.

He said be­fore the Gov­ern­ment shut down Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery, they went on a ram­page to at­tack the work­ers.

Now the PNM is do­ing the same thing by blam­ing and mak­ing a case against WASA work­ers for its cur­rent state of af­fairs.

“What they are not fo­cus­ing on... which is the true rea­son for WASA ‘s fail­ing is the cor­rup­tion at the lev­el of the WASA’s board which was ap­point­ed by the PNM to car­ry out its man­date.”

Ram drew ref­er­ence to a Sep­tem­ber 12, 2021, Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle head­lined “WASA man­agers un­der Probe- $7.7 mil­lion bad deal.”

The ar­ti­cle sur­rounds the pur­chase of chem­i­cals by two WASA man­agers some of which were of no use to the au­thor­i­ty.

“But they want to put the blame on work­ers. This is just a tip of the ice­berg. And don’t be fooled that this is some star­tling dis­cov­ery that the new board will lead to some form of ac­tion.”

The Op­po­si­tion MP said if the board was not dis­tract­ed by oth­er things there could have been due dili­gence.

“They are dis­tract­ed be­cause they are car­ry­ing out the bid­ding of the min­is­ter. We are told that the $7.7 mil­lion is geared to­ward the send­ing home of 135 man­agers with­in the next two months.”

Again, Ram called on Gon­za­les to tell the pop­u­la­tion the truth.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was cre­at­ing a nar­ra­tive to de­stroy and sell off WASA to their friends.

Ram al­so ques­tioned if the T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) still has a voice.

When the UNC was in pow­er, Ram said the TT­TI which is a watch­dog against cor­rup­tion was very vo­cal.

Now he said the or­gan­i­sa­tion has gone com­plete­ly silent.

In the last six years, Ram said so many is­sues have been raised rang­ing from the fake oil scan­dal, the gut­ted pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is’ $98,000 bank de­posit, the un­fold­ing Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny de­ba­cle and Sham­fa Cud­joe’s roam­ing phone bill but TT­TI has not ut­tered a word.

“Have they act­ed with any sense of ur­gency, alacrity and en­thu­si­asm in the way they did when Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was prime min­is­ter? I in­tend to write the trans­paren­cy head­quar­ters in Ger­many in the com­ing days to bring this to their at­ten­tion,” Ram said.