RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

De­spite as­sur­ances from Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath that no jobs will be lost as the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) re­verts to its orig­i­nal man­age­ment struc­ture, in­ter­nal con­cerns are mount­ing over po­ten­tial job loss­es, le­gal bat­tles and ris­ing costs to the state.

A day af­ter Padarath vis­it­ed the util­i­ty and spoke to em­ploy­ees, whom he said ex­pressed re­lief that their jobs were se­cure, sources with­in WASA yes­ter­day said ques­tions re­main about the fu­ture of work­ers brought in dur­ing the re­struc­tur­ing phase. Some of those work­ers were hired ex­ter­nal­ly, the source said, adding they may not have low­er roles to re­turn to when the com­pa­ny re­verts to the pre­vi­ous op­er­a­tional sys­tem, leav­ing them vul­ner­a­ble to job loss.

“There are peo­ple who were brought in from out­side the or­gan­i­sa­tion and placed in high-lev­el po­si­tions. Now that the struc­ture is be­ing rolled back, there’s no place for them to go. Some of them may lose their jobs,” the source said.

The planned re­struc­tur­ing, ini­ti­at­ed un­der for­mer min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, saw WASA di­vid­ed in­to sev­er­al dis­tricts—North West, North East, Cen­tral, and South—which shift­ed the re­port­ing and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al frame­work sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Now that the agency is re­turn­ing to a re­gion­al mod­el, some em­ploy­ees may be de­mot­ed to their orig­i­nal posts with re­duced salaries.

“If some­one was pro­mot­ed to a se­nior man­age­ment role and is now be­ing sent back to a low­er po­si­tion, that could come with a pay cut. Peo­ple are un­der­stand­ably up­set and un­cer­tain about what comes next,” the source added.

There is al­so con­cern that de­mo­tions could spark a wave of le­gal chal­lenges. Many of the ex­ec­u­tives re­port­ed­ly have con­tracts that in­clude claus­es re­quir­ing the state to pay out the re­main­der of their con­tracts if ter­mi­nat­ed ear­ly.

“These con­tracts al­low for pay­outs if a po­si­tion is tak­en away. That could be­come very ex­pen­sive for the gov­ern­ment,” the source ex­plained.

“In­stead of sav­ing mon­ey, they might end up spend­ing more.”

In some in­stances, for­mer team lead­ers are be­ing pro­mot­ed back to se­nior man­ag­er po­si­tions, which could lead to high­er salaries than what they were earn­ing pre­vi­ous­ly, the source said. This has cre­at­ed fur­ther un­ease, as em­ploy­ees strug­gle to un­der­stand the new re­port­ing struc­ture and fear mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion or man­age­r­i­al con­fu­sion.

“The lines of re­port­ing are not al­ways clear. Un­til the ex­ec­u­tive struc­ture is fi­nalised, it’s not cer­tain who is re­port­ing to whom,” the source said.

Guardian Me­dia sent sev­er­al ques­tions to Min­is­ter Padarath, ask­ing how his re­cent meet­ing with WASA went, whether the Gov­ern­ment would be re­quired to pay man­agers whose con­tracts are af­fect­ed, and what would hap­pen to ex­ter­nal hires who can­not be re­as­signed to low­er roles. The min­is­ter was al­so asked if he an­tic­i­pates le­gal ac­tion from af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees and whether it is true that some team lead­ers will now be earn­ing more un­der the re­stored struc­ture. Up to press time, how­ev­er Padarath had not re­spond­ed. For­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said he would com­ment at a lat­er time.

Ear­li­er this month, Padarath strong­ly crit­i­cised the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s man­age­ment of WASA, call­ing it top-heavy and fi­nan­cial­ly un­sus­tain­able. He said un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment, the num­ber of ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment po­si­tions grew to 34, cost­ing tax­pay­ers more than $70 mil­lion a year. He de­scribed this ex­pan­sion as a bur­den on the pub­lic purse and said it formed part of a broad­er pat­tern of mis­man­age­ment.

Padarath al­so con­demned the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion’s trans­for­ma­tion plan, say­ing it would have led to the re­trench­ment of over 2,800 work­ers, in­clud­ing hun­dreds of month­ly-paid, man­age­ment, su­per­vi­so­ry, and dai­ly-paid staff. Padarath has promised that the cur­rent re­struc­tur­ing is in­tend­ed to re­duce the num­ber of high-lev­el ex­ec­u­tive roles while pre­serv­ing jobs at low­er lev­els. He said the goal is to stream­line WASA’s man­age­ment to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy with­out cut­ting reg­u­lar em­ploy­ees.