An al­liance was re­born yes­ter­day, as the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) joined forces to fight for Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) work­ers.

Speak­ing at WASA’s St Joseph of­fice, PSA WASA sec­tion chair­man Mark Saun­ders said fol­low­ing nu­mer­ous pro­nounce­ments on the trans­for­ma­tion of WASA by Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­lves and board chair­man Ravin­dra Nan­ga, the NUGFW and PSA had de­cid­ed to “re­birth” a strate­gic al­liance be­tween the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty unions rep­re­sent­ing the dai­ly paid and month­ly paid em­ploy­ees.

The PSA rep­re­sents the month­ly paid work­ers and the NUGFW the dai­ly rat­ed work­ers. The al­liance will be called the Strate­gic WASA Al­liance Team (SWAT).

Speak­ing to WASA work­ers, Saun­ders ac­cused Gon­za­lves and Nan­ga, through pub­lic state­ments, of con­stant­ly de­mon­is­ing and vil­i­fy­ing work­ers by paint­ing them as lazy, in­com­pe­tent and cor­rupt. He said this was all be­ing done in an ef­fort to ar­bi­trar­i­ly dis­miss and bring an end to the terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment for work­ers through the wind­ing up of WASA, us­ing the “un­em­pir­i­cal Cab­i­net sub­com­mit­tee re­port.”

Saun­ders wants, “the Gov­ern­ment to shelve its cur­rent trans­for­ma­tion plan for WASA and en­gage in good faith ne­go­ti­a­tions with the unions on a re­struc­tur­ing plan which ac­knowl­edges and in­cor­po­rates the views of the WASA work­ers as part of the so­lu­tion.”

He added, “The unions at WASA have al­ways been amenable to the re­struc­tur­ing of WASA and are still in pos­ses­sion of mem­o­ran­da dat­ed as far back as 2011 to achieve this end. Con­trary to what has been stat­ed by both the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and the chair­man of the board of com­mis­sion­ers, we agree that WASA re­quires re­struc­tur­ing in or­der to ful­ly de­liv­er on its man­date to the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go. How­ev­er, we do not agree with the cur­rent trans­for­ma­tion/re­struc­tur­ing process be­cause there was no work­er in­volve­ment in the de­vel­op­ment of the Cab­i­net sub­com­mit­tee’s re­port on WASA and its sub­se­quent rec­om­men­da­tion to trans­form WASA in­to a wa­ter man­age­ment com­pa­ny.”

NUGFW chair­man (WASA sec­tion) Andy Crichlow was al­so at the launch.