Shal­iza?Has­sanali

The Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) has in­ter­vened to find al­ter­na­tive work for 800 se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers whose con­tract with the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) end­ed pre­ma­ture­ly be­cause of an out­stand­ing debt of over $100 mil­lion.

Yes­ter­day, vice-pres­i­dent of the EPA, An­cil John-Nicholas, con­firmed he re­quest­ed a meet­ing with T&T Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices' (TTSS) gen­er­al man­ag­er, Towfeek Ali, to­day to try and ab­sorb some of the work­ers in oth­er se­cu­ri­ty firms.

Ali on Tues­day or­dered his se­cu­ri­ty guards to cease du­ty on all of WASA's com­pounds af­ter he claimed his $146 mil­lion con­tract had been breached by non-pay­ment of fees.

Since then, the work­ers, who were rep­re­sent­ed by the EPA, have been home.

In light of this move, WASA had to call out the army and po­lice to guard its Navet, Ca­roni and Are­na reser­voirs and oth­er as­sets.

At­tor­ney Nyree Al­fon­so, who is a di­rec­tor of TTSS and Ali's wife, said WASA is­sued a let­ter yes­ter­day to TTSS, in­form­ing them they had ter­mi­nat­ed its three-year con­tract.

Al­fon­so said she was baf­fled by the move, since she had no­ti­fied WASA since Tues­day, via email, that they would no longer en­gage its con­tract due to non-pay­ment on their part.

"Do you ter­mi­nate a con­tract twice? That let­ter sent by WASA this morn­ing was very dis­ap­point­ing. If I have to take as a sig­nal whether WASA wish­es to en­gage with me for the pur­pos­es of reach­ing a set­tle­ment, I get the an­swer loud and clear. It is clear to me that WASA does not give a hoot. I am putting my house in or­der to go to court," she added.

Al­fon­so said they have agreed to meet with the EPA and its ex­ec­u­tive at its Ch­agua­nas of­fice.

"What both­ers me is that I am ter­mi­nat­ing 800 peo­ple. The fam­i­lies of these 800 peo­ple will al­so be af­fect­ed. I don't know if politi­cians do not take on those things.

"Those things trou­ble me great­ly. We are meet­ing to see dy­nam­i­cal­ly what is the best thing that we can do. We might be able to hold on to some peo­ple (work­ers)," Al­fon­so said.

TTSS has not paid its se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers for April which amounts to $3.5 mil­lion.

John-Nicholas said the EPA would try its best to ab­sorb the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers in­to pri­vate firms.

"These firms are al­ways woe­ful­ly un­der­manned and need se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers. This is one av­enue we are look­ing at," he said.

WASA's chair­man Rom­ney Thomas said yes­ter­day the com­pa­ny con­tin­ued to en­gage the ser­vices of pri­vate con­trac­tors, the po­lice and army to guard its reser­voirs and fa­cil­i­ties where wa­ter was stored and dis­trib­uted.

"We have every­thing un­der con­trol," Thomas said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.