A “mis­chief mak­er” is how for­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les de­scribed Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas, af­ter she claimed Gov­ern­ment was plan­ning to re­trench 5,000 Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) work­ers.

At a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) meet­ing at the St John’s Am­bu­lance Hall, Port-of-Spain, on Wednes­day, Thomas warned if the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) wins the elec­tion, they will axe thou­sands of WASA em­ploy­ees.

“The PNM has de­vel­oped a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee re­port on the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty. That Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee re­port says that the on­ly so­lu­tion to the is­sues plagu­ing the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty is the in­cre­men­tal dis­il­lu­sion of WASA. Com­rades, that means every sin­gle work­er will be ter­mi­nat­ed, dis­missed, fired, sent home,” she said.

“Yet an­oth­er group of work­ers on the bread­line. An­oth­er feath­er in their cap. One more com­pa­ny off of their check­list, their hit list you might want to call it.

“An­oth­er 5,000 fam­i­lies de­stroyed at the hands of the PNM. An­oth­er 5,000 fam­i­lies sent in­to pover­ty at the hands of the PNM. An­oth­er 5,000 fam­i­lies fac­ing re­pos­ses­sion of their homes, their ve­hi­cles, at the hands of the PNM.”

Thomas al­so claimed that Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young mes­saged her on Wednes­day, ac­cus­ing her of mak­ing false al­le­ga­tions. She re­spond­ed by de­mand­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“You call­ing Mar­vin a liar that when he said to Trinidad and To­ba­go that WASA was over­staffed, he was mis­lead­ing the pop­u­la­tion? That he was spread­ing pro­pa­gan­da? That when he stat­ed that 426 man­agers will be go­ing home, he was ly­ing?”

Thomas re­mind­ed WASA em­ploy­ees that the same PNM Gov­ern­ment once claimed it would not shut down Petrotrin and then did ex­act­ly that.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les rub­bished the claims and ac­cused Thomas of de­lib­er­ate­ly spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion.

“Fe­l­isha is a mis­chief-mak­er, she is a liar and she knows ex­act­ly the mis­chief that she is en­gag­ing in,” he said.

Gon­za­les clar­i­fied that two Cab­i­net-sub com­mit­tees re­viewed WASA’s op­er­a­tions.

The find­ings, which were con­tained in a 135-page re­port, re­vealed wide­spread dys­func­tion, in­clud­ing fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment, lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty, cor­rup­tion and wide­spread in­ef­fi­cien­cy. The re­port al­so found that WASA had over 4,800 work­ers, more than dou­ble the num­ber ap­proved in 1999. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, WASA’s re­liance on ex­pen­sive de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter added strain on pub­lic fi­nances.

The re­port rec­om­mend­ed in­cre­men­tal­ly dis­solv­ing WASA in its cur­rent form and cre­at­ing a new, ef­fi­cient, tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven com­pa­ny. A tran­si­tion team was to be es­tab­lished to guide the changeover, in­clud­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with trade unions and tech­no­log­i­cal up­grades.

Gon­za­les said one of the sub-com­mit­tees rec­om­mend­ed ter­mi­nat­ing 426 WASA man­agers and “with the new lead­er­ship man­age­ment team, they will iden­ti­fy oth­er ar­eas with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion that re­quire ad­just­ments.”

He said the ev­i­dence of the adop­tion of these rec­om­men­da­tions lies with the ap­point­ment of the new CEO, Bar­ba­di­an na­tion­al Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day, on De­cem­ber 1, 2024. He added that sev­er­al oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions have been adopt­ed, in­clud­ing au­toma­tion of WASA’s op­er­a­tions, re­fur­bish­ment of wa­ter treat­ment plants, roll­out of e-cap­i­tal projects, im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Na­tion­al Wa­ter Sec­tor Trans­for­ma­tion Plan, and se­cur­ing an IDB loan to sup­port these ini­tia­tives.

He ac­cused Thomas of be­ing a hyp­ocrite, stat­ing: “She must al­so talk about the find­ings in that 2020 re­port which point­ed to com­pa­nies as­so­ci­at­ed with key of­fi­cials of the PSA who were en­gag­ing in con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments with WASA.” he said.

Prime Min­is­ter Young al­so de­nied the claims made Thomas. He took to so­cial me­dia to clear up “mis­in­for­ma­tion,” say­ing the al­le­ga­tions were “com­plete­ly false” and an at­tempt to ma­nip­u­late WASA work­ers.

“We are not get­ting rid of WASA and T&TEC and we’re not pri­vatis­ing it,” he lat­er said on a PNM plat­form in St James Wednes­day.