KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath is re­new­ing his call for Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les to re­veal the salaries of se­nior man­agers at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

De­spite mul­ti­ple Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) re­quests be­ing de­nied by WASA, Padarath said, Gon­za­les must tell the pub­lic how much mon­ey is be­ing spent on WASA ex­ec­u­tives.

WASA’s new CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day is set to earn $100,000 plus perks each month.

Dur­ing an Op­po­si­tion me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Padarath said, “How did you go about bring­ing in ten WASA man­agers, two of whom we are told are for­mer PNM gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­dates?

“Why was it that the chief per­son­nel of­fi­cer did not de­ter­mine the terms and con­di­tions of those man­agers?

“It is friends, fi­nanciers, and fam­i­ly of the PNM that con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit while the rest of Trinidad and To­ba­go goes to hell in a hand­bas­ket. Ham, lamb and jam for all of them in the PNM while you con­tin­ue to re­ceive a lump of coal.”

Ques­tion­ing what WASA had to hide, Padarath al­so crit­i­cised Gon­za­les for be­ing at the cen­tre of al­le­ga­tions made against a WASA em­ploy­ee.

Ear­li­er this month, Jus­tice Na­dia Kan­ga­loo ruled against WASA in a FOIA case brought for­ward by stal­wart em­ploy­ee Lancelot Leza­ma.

Gon­za­les ac­cused WASA em­ploy­ee Ce­cil Matthews of per­mit­ting a non-WASA in­di­vid­ual to dri­ve a com­pa­ny ve­hi­cle, a claim that Leza­ma, af­ter an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, found to be base­less.

De­spite the find­ings, se­nior WASA of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing then-chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dr Lennox Sealy, al­leged­ly pres­sured Leza­ma to al­ter his re­port to sup­port Gon­za­les’ claims.

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion said it gained a land­mark vic­to­ry.

In re­sponse to the court’s rul­ing, Padarath said, “While the min­is­ter has told us to eat less mac­a­roni pie and ham, our tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars are jump­ing up to pay out le­gal costs and set­tle­ments for po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion and vic­tim­i­sa­tion.

“WASA will have to fork out mil­lions of dol­lars to pay a for­mer WASA em­ploy­ee for po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion and vic­tim­i­sa­tion.”