WASA TO SEND HOME 3,000 WORKERS
THE troubled Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) would send home some 3,000 workers over the next few months.
That is in addition to the 426 managers who would get the pink slip.
This would leave 1,848 workers on the payroll.
Some of the retrenched workers and managers would be re-employed in a new water and sewerage company.
But there are concerns from well-placed insiders that the basis for retaining and rehiring would be political cronyism and not competence in the water sector.
The new agency “could end up with the dregs,” said an informed source.
Cabinet has accepted a timeline for restructuring WASA, which has not been disclosed by Minister of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales.
Gonzales has so far only revealed plans to retrench managers.
The entire revamping arrangement would be unveiled in a piecemeal fashion, the source told Sunshine Today.
The restructuring process is likely to take up to 24 months and includes plans to incorporate modern technology, with a greater focus on customers and a mandate to be financially viable.
There would be a significant investment in equipment and an increased focus on preventative maintenance.
The loss-making WASA has cost taxpayers almost $22 billion in subventions in just a single decade.
Despite the exorbitant cost of running the operations, less than one-third of consumers receive a 24-7 supply, and leaks and theft drain up to 50 percent of harvested water.
The displacement of employees and the establishment of a new agency mean that Public Services Association (PSA) and National Union of Government and Federated Workers (NUGFW) would lose their bargaining status for monthly- and daily-paid workers respectively.
The unions would have to organise membership among the new employees and apply to the Registration, Recognition and Certification Board for bargaining rights.
The official reason for setting up a new company is to begin debt-free and with a new image and corporate culture.
But the move would have the far-reaching effect of breaking the entrenched trade union representations by PSA and NUGFW.
The Rowley Government, which rode into national office with the exuberant support of the labour movement, now has tense relations with trade unions.
The labour sector has mounted a campaign against the government, which it has branded as anti-worker.
An informed source said that a large number of workers were employed through the years on the basis of political patronage.
“WASA is bloated, hugely inefficient and improperly managed,” the source stated.
But a report of a Cabinet Sub-Committee turned the tables and placed heavy blame on the unions.
The report claimed that over the years WASA negotiated collective agreements to secure “industrial peace” by “ceding control of the authority to the unions”.
The Cabinet team said: “In some cases, the agreements constrain the authority from reengineering and introducing new and contemporary water management technologies into its operations without first securing the unions’ approval”.
Among workers to be affected are those deployed in the Beetham Wastewater Project, Adopt-a-River Programme, Tobago Wastewater Project, Tobago Expansion Services, and Customer Contact Centre.
Service providers would have to reapply when the new organisation is established.
The Cabinet Sub-Committee said there is “compelling evidence” that “unions have become suppliers of goods and services to the authority” while “management turns a blind eye to this reality”.
The loss of bargaining status by PSA and NUGFW would loosen their hold on service contracts.
The report told of a “staff culture with an engrained mentality of earning inflated remunerations without attendance, the addition of value and excessive union interference”.
The Cabinet Sub-Committee indicted “successive management teams” as being “powerless to the unions’ encroachment of the authority’s rights to manage, direct and own its operational affairs”.
WASA was said to have “a lack of accountability” and “an aversion to a result-oriented order of business” and a “no-consequence environment” that “has created an avenue for corruption”.
The authority is operating “blindly,” the Cabinet team stated, with poor record keeping.
The management was described as “top-heavy” and included directors, heads, senior managers, department managers, assistant managers, section managers, union managers and supervisors.
The new water company would have to urgently seek new sources of water, since there is serious degradation in watershed areas, according to the report.
Poor land use was said to be a major reason.
There is “over-reliance” on desalinated water, according to the Cabinet team.
The Regulated Industries Commission (RIC) is to deliberate on an increase in water rates, which would almost surely lead to consumers paying more for the precious commodity.
WASA was established in September 1965 and brought together seven agencies that were involved in the water and sewerage sector.
The authority currently produces an average of 220 million gallons of water a day.
