Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas yes­ter­day put the union’s protest ac­tion at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) on hold, af­ter Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath com­mit­ted Gov­ern­ment to set­tling the out­stand­ing pro­pos­als for some 2,800 month­ly-paid work­ers. How­ev­er, she is warn­ing that the union will re­sume in­dus­tri­al ac­tion if Gov­ern­ment fails to de­liv­er.

Thomas made the rev­e­la­tion af­ter Padarath met with the PSA, WASA CEO Roshan Ban­wah and oth­er ex­ec­u­tives yes­ter­day morn­ing, fol­low­ing two days of protest by work­ers out­side the au­thor­i­ty’s com­pound.

Thomas said the min­is­ter’s in­ter­ven­tion re­sult­ed in a com­mit­ment by WASA to get the union’s wage pro­pos­als to the min­istry by the end of the week.

“WASA was the on­ly or­gan­i­sa­tion that the di­rec­tor of hu­man re­source had not pro­gressed our sub­mis­sions. And so to­day, we got the com­mit­ment from the min­is­ter, and I un­der­stand the CEO is now work­ing with the di­rec­tor of hu­man re­source to move it to the min­istry,” Thomas said.

“I ap­pre­ci­ate the min­is­ter’s in­ter­ven­tion. This is some­thing that we have not seen in the past. His in­ter­ven­tion here says to us that the work­ers mat­ter. The work­ers’ is­sues mat­ter, and we ap­pre­ci­ate the in­ter­ven­tion.”

Thomas said the PSA is hope­ful the lat­est de­vel­op­ment will lead to a set­tle­ment but warned the union is pre­pared to re­turn to in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.

“Well, we have the com­mit­ment, and if it is not fol­lowed through, of course, we con­tin­ue with the ac­tion,” she said.

“We are hope­ful that now with the min­is­ter’s in­ter­ven­tion that it will go the way it needs to go so that our ne­go­ti­a­tions can be set­tled.”

Thomas al­so re­ject­ed the sug­ges­tion that the dis­pute cen­tres sole­ly on Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to a 10 per cent in­crease.

“The Gov­ern­ment has not re­neged on their com­mit­ment to pay 10% to any cat­e­go­ry of work­ers,” she said.

Ac­cus­ing the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion of pre­sent­ing work­ers with a “take it or leave it” ap­proach, she said,

“One of the things that we fought for is the re­turn of ne­go­ti­a­tions. Be­cause what was hap­pen­ing be­fore was not ne­go­ti­a­tions. We were be­ing met with take it or leave it, and that is not the sit­u­a­tion to­day.

“This is part and par­cel of ne­go­ti­a­tions, and so we are grate­ful to have ne­go­ti­a­tions ac­tu­al­ly tak­ing place to­day.”

Padarath, mean­while, as­sured the work­ers that Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing with the PSA to re­solve out­stand­ing is­sues. He ac­knowl­edged the dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances in­her­it­ed by the Gov­ern­ment, while point­ing to ef­forts to at­tract strate­gic in­vest­ment and part­ner­ships to im­prove WASA’s po­si­tion.

“The one thing that I want to leave here very clear is un­der­stand­ing that we re­main com­mit­ted to you and the cause. We will con­tin­ue to work with you to iron out the kinks and the snags that we have had over the last cou­ple days,” Padarath said.

He said Gov­ern­ment’s ob­jec­tive is to move the work­ers to­wards a point of sat­is­fac­tion based on their re­quests, while main­tain­ing the re­quired process­es.

Padarath said the WASA CEO will now play a key role in en­sur­ing the PSA’s pro­pos­als move through the sys­tem.

“The is­sue of process will con­tin­ue to be fol­lowed with the in­struc­tion that the CEO will be­come the in­ter­me­di­ary to en­sure that by the end of this week the pro­pos­als ad­vance to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties,” he said.

He al­so called for bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween WASA man­age­ment and the union.

“The com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the man­age­ment of WASA and the union is im­proved and strength­ened, and there must be an open-door pol­i­cy.”

Padarath said Gov­ern­ment is al­so look­ing at strate­gic in­vest­ment through part­ner­ships both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to im­prove WASA’s po­si­tion and its abil­i­ty to de­liv­er for work­ers and con­sumers.

The lat­est in­ter­ven­tion has al­so reignit­ed the po­lit­i­cal bat­tle over the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s re­struc­tur­ing pro­gramme un­der for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les.

Thomas said the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion had no moral au­thor­i­ty to speak on the cur­rent is­sue, as it failed to set­tle WASA work­ers’ ne­go­ti­a­tions and the union re­ject­ed its re­struc­tur­ing pro­gramme.

“The re­struc­tur­ing that was be­ing pushed by Mar­vin Gon­za­les was nev­er re­struc­tur­ing. It was al­ways a sit­u­a­tion where they were plan­ning to grad­u­al­ly close down this au­thor­i­ty and re­open a new en­ti­ty.”

She ques­tioned the ben­e­fit to con­sumers of those plans, ar­gu­ing none of them ad­dressed the fun­da­men­tal prob­lems af­fect­ing the coun­try’s wa­ter sup­ply.

How­ev­er, in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Gon­za­les in­sist­ed he has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to scru­ti­nise Gov­ern­ment as

an MP. He de­fend­ed his record and re­ject­ed any sug­ges­tion that he be­trayed the pub­lic trust, say­ing he would con­tin­ue to chal­lenge the Gov­ern­ment.

“This is not a per­son­al bat­tle. This is about my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as an elect­ed mem­ber of Par­lia­ment to speak with­out fear, to chal­lenge wrong­do­ing, to de­mand an­swers, and to de­fend the in­ter­ests of the peo­ple I rep­re­sent,” he stat­ed.

“I will con­tin­ue to speak. I will con­tin­ue to ask the dif­fi­cult ques­tions and I will con­tin­ue to hold this ly­ing gov­ern­ment ac­count­able.”