Yvonne Webb

While the Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to cre­ate 20,000 jobs in hot spots ar­eas through­out the coun­try, more than 400 per­ma­nent work­ers at the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) are fac­ing the bread­line. Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al of the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) James Lam­bert, said the af­fect­ed work­ers have be­tween eight and ten years un­bro­ken ser­vice with WASA and the union's lawyers are stand­ing by to file an in­junc­tion to stop the dis­missals. "This is non­sense. The Gov­ern­ment is mak­ing arrange­ments to spend $300 mil­lion to cre­ate 20,000 jobs in hot spots, but you are telling these 400 plus work­ers to go home one month be­fore Christ­mas? "What do you want these men and women to do, go in a hotspot and ap­ply for a job? That is to­tal mad­ness," Lam­bert de­clared.

"We have in­for­ma­tion that while they are send­ing home these work­ers, they are bring­ing in oth­er peo­ple to fill these po­si­tions," he charged. A WASA of­fi­cial de­nied Lam­bert's claims, say­ing he is not aware that the util­i­ty is hir­ing per­sons at that lev­el. The work­ers, who were in­volved in main­te­nance of wa­ter and waste wa­ter fa­cil­i­ties as part of the Gov­ern­ment fund­ed Na­tion­al Skills De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (NS­DP), have re­ceived let­ters of ter­mi­na­tion which takes ef­fect to­day. They were giv­en 45 days no­tice. The let­ters signed with an il­leg­i­ble hand writ­ing, on pho­to­copied let­ter heads, in­formed the work­ers that they will be paid ter­mi­nal ben­e­fits of two years' salary for every year worked and will be pro­vid­ed with per­son­al and fi­nan­cial coun­selling ser­vices.

NUGFW of­fi­cials met with WASA's Hu­man Re­sources Man­ag­er Ken Ma­habir and called for the ter­mi­na­tion no­tices to be with­drawn. Lam­bert said to date ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70 work­ers have been hand­ed ter­mi­na­tion let­ters. He said there are re­ports that more than 400 work­ers will even­tu­al­ly be ter­mi­nat­ed by WASA. He said: "Un­der the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act (IRA), which su­per­sedes the col­lec­tive agree­ment, any com­pa­ny ter­mi­nat­ing the ser­vices of five or more work­ers must in­form the ma­jor­i­ty union and al­so the Min­istry of Labour, with rea­sons for want­i­ng to ter­mi­nate the ser­vices of those peo­ple. That has not been done," Lam­bert as­sert­ed. Four of the af­fect­ed work­ers, who are as­signed to WASA King's Wharf of­fice in San Fer­nan­do, spoke to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day about their plight.

The four in­clude Mary Caton and Ronald Sook­nanan, who have eight years ser­vice; Roger Charles, who has been em­ployed for five years and Bri­an Boodram who been with WASA for ten years. They all said they will be re­port­ing for du­ty as usu­al to­day. "When Gan­ga Singh was ap­point­ed as CEO, he met with all of the NS­DP work­ers and as­sured us that our jobs were safe. Now one month be­fore Christ­mas, with­out warn­ing, you want to send us home," Caton ex­claimed. "I have ben­e­fit­ed, in the past from sick leave, va­ca­tion leave, raise in pay, back pay. I re­cent­ly got a job let­ter to take out a loan, why did they give me that let­ter if they knew they were go­ing to fire me," the dis­traught woman asked. "We need some an­swers, but no one wants to speak to us. No one is telling us why they want to fire us," she said.

WASA re­sponds

Daniel Plen­ty, Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, WASA:

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) ad­vis­es that work­ers en­gaged un­der the Na­tion­al So­cial De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (NS­DP) are done so for im­ple­men­ta­tion of projects and are sub­ject to the avail­abil­i­ty of project fund­ing un­der the pro­gramme. NS­DP work­ers do not form part of the Au­thor­i­ty's em­ploy­ee base. Notwith­stand­ing this, with the un­avail­abil­i­ty of fund­ing for cer­tain projects (non- pipeline projects), no­tices were is­sued to af­fect­ed work­ers in good faith in ac­cor­dance with good In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions prac­tice. WASA al­so took the fol­low­ing steps to as­sist the work­ers in their tran­si­tion from work­ing un­der the pro­gramme:

• A ter­mi­na­tion ben­e­fit will be paid to each work­er based on a stip­u­lat­ed for­mu­la

• NED­CO was con­tract­ed to de­sign and con­duct a train­ing pro­gramme that al­lows work­ers to be com­pet­i­tive en­tre­pre­neurs dur­ing their tran­si­tion from the NS­DP

• Fi­nan­cial and per­son­al coun­selling ser­vices have been pro­vid­ed.