MORE THAN 1,000 WASA WORKERS TO GO

MORE than 1,000 workers of the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) are to lose their jobs. 

The timing of the planned retrenchments has not yet been decided. 

Finance Minister Colm Imbert would likely hint at “staff rationalisation” during his forthcoming Budget presentation. 

Imbert would do so as he explains that the country could no longer afford to subsidise the inefficient agency, which requested $1.6 billion in the most recent fiscal year and was provided with $1 billion. 

The Minister is expected to reveal reduced transfers and subsidies to most Government agencies and statutory bodies, as national revenues continue to shrink. 

Imbert would announce that the Government is acting upon a Cabinet Sub-Committee report, which stated that WASA is overstaffed by more than 1,500 workers. 

There are currently more than 4,800 workers at the utility, 3,100 more than originally scheduled.. 

The report said the authority has become overstaffed, unproductive, unwieldy, and unresponsive. 

WASA is so deeply “dysfunctional” that it is “incapable of effectively satisfying its customers’ demands and the State’s mandate.” 

The Committee, headed by Public Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales, said that if the status quo is maintained, the Government would be in an “unsustainable and unacceptable position to continuing to fund, to the tune of almost $2 billion annually, an organisation that lacks the ability to transform itself.” 

There have been dramatic changes in the executive team, as a first measure in bringing the required change to WASA, but informed sources said there is no funding for severance payments to retrenched workers. 

That is a stumbling block in executing the labour plan.  

The severance bill would run into hundreds of millions of dollars. 

The new executive team, led by Ravindra Nanga, is reportedly under pressure from Gonzales to institute the required transformation that was proposed in the exhaustive report. 

After the report was made public, Gonzales said: “We will identify those areas of wastage and move swiftly toward reengineering and restructuring the utility to ensure value for money, as well as sound corporate governance.” 

The Public Services Association, led by Watson Duke, has urged the Government to increase water rates to save workers’ jobs. 

But Gonzales has stressed that “given the drastic fall in the country’s revenues and the impact of Covid-19 on T&T and the world economy, the Government does not have the financial resources to pump $2 billion annually into WASA.” 

He called for management of the authority “in a manner that accords for fiscal prudence and responsibility.”  

Timing of the mass retrenchment is the only major outstanding decision on staff reduction, according to sources.