SoE TO BE USED AGAINST 3,000 WASA WORKERS?

A MAJOR restructuring plan is to be implemented for the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) and the Government would use the current State of Emergency to clamp down on protests by displaced workers. 

This is the claim of Rudranath Indarsingh, Opposition Member of Parliament and former trade union leader. 

Indarsingh made the allegation while debating the Government’s measure to extend the life of the SoE by three months. 

CounterPunchTT has confirmed that there are plans to implement a Cabinet Sub-Committee’s report on WASA, which calls for streamlining of operations, including loss of hundreds of jobs. 

The Integrated Water Management Programme for sustainable water supply would affect positions in all areas of the authority’s activities, including management. 

The report stated that WASA is overstaffed by 3,152 workers. 

Altogether, there are 4,800 workers at the authority. 

The report says that WASA’s organisational structure is “complex, confusing and does not support a consistent logic, causing the authority to be dysfunctional in its entirety.” 

WASA has 426 senior managers, managers, assistant managers, section managers, unit managers and supervisors, instead of the 172 which were approved for the management structure. 

The approved set-up calls for 1,723 workers, but there are 4,828. 

The report said that WASA’s management is “exceedingly top heavy and possesses an injudiciously long chain of command which is twice that of the standard norm…” 

The report tells of “WASA’s seemingly limitless staff numbers.”  

Public Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales has said that governments have spent $28 billion at WASA over the past 15 years, and there has been no improvement in the availability of water to citizens. 

The authority pays hefty bonuses to staff, and also overtime, in addition to employing contractors. 

“By all international accounting standards, WASA is insolvent,” the report stated. 

Half of the annual $2 billion in subventions to the authority is used to pay salaries.  

The report calls for reductions in the subventions “to wean the authority off the government’s coffers and make the organisation more self-sufficient.”  

Now an opposition parliamentarian is claiming that the Government would send home workers under the cover of the SoE. 

Under the SoE, public protests are restricted.