Rhon­dor Dowlat

Process Plant Op­er­a­tors (PPO) at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) will not be fac­ing any dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion and all work­ing arrange­ments are to be nor­malised with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

This was the agree­ment reached dur­ing con­tin­ued cri­sis talks by the State-owned com­pa­ny and the rep­re­sent­ing union, the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), on Thurs­day night.

A Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) was al­so signed by five rep­re­sen­ta­tives of each of the two par­ties, in­clud­ing WASA's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Alan Poon-King and PSA's pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke. The doc­u­ment promis­es that 14 is­sues will be ad­dressed soon, in­clud­ing the pro­cure­ment of Self-Con­tained Breath­ing Ap­pa­ra­tus (SC­BA) kits with­in eight weeks.

An agree­ment was al­so reached for all fit test­ing/train­ing for PPOs in the north, south and To­ba­go to be con­duct­ed with­in two weeks from Sep­tem­ber 22. Al­so, a crew of trained and fit-test­ed per­son­nel is to be es­tab­lished to con­duct chlo­rine op­er­a­tions pend­ing the com­ple­tion of fit test­ing/train­ing for PPOs.

Every chlo­rine room is to be re­viewed to en­sure that it is con­sis­tent with in­dus­try stan­dards with­in three months and based on the out­comes of the re­view, re­design will com­mence.

Chlo­rine de­tec­tion alarms and ex­trac­tor fans are al­so to be in­stalled at these in­stal­la­tions with­in three weeks.

An au­dit, ef­fec­tive Sep­tem­ber 22, of the Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment (PPE) is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed with­in a week. PPE will be re­placed/pro­vid­ed where re­quired. The PPE com­pris­es form-fit­ting gloves, full-face res­pi­ra­tors, long-sleeved cov­er­alls, steel-tipped boots and hel­mets.

With re­spect to se­cu­ri­ty is­sues, it was agreed that a com­plete risk as­sess­ment of all plants, wells and in­takes be con­duct­ed by the Se­cu­ri­ty De­part­ment for the pur­pose of de­ter­min­ing es­tate con­sta­ble staffing re­quire­ments at var­i­ous plants and a re­port will be pro­vid­ed with­in one week.

Ac­cord­ing to the MOU, the needs iden­ti­fied by this risk as­sess­ment will be im­ple­ment­ed one week af­ter Sep­tem­ber 29, that is, Oc­to­ber 6. In the in­ter­im, Mo­bile Re­sponse Units at­tached to satel­lite cen­tres shall be es­tab­lished to pro­vide im­me­di­ate se­cu­ri­ty needs for the PPOs as well as "off" site fa­cil­i­ties.

With re­spect to com­mu­ni­ca­tion is­sues, tele­phone lines at the Las Lo­mas and Hol­lis Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant will be re­in­stat­ed im­me­di­ate­ly. A ra­dio will al­so be in­stalled at the Matu­ra Sta­tion to pro­vide com­mu­ni­ca­tion. At the Matu­ra, Clarke Road and La For­tune in­stal­la­tions, where a con­tain­er ex­ists, of­fices shall be built to ac­com­mo­date the PPOs at these ar­eas with­in four months.

On Wednes­day night at about 9.30 pm, 75 per cent of WASA's treat­ment plants and wells were shut down. WASA work­ers then made their way to WASA's Pub­lic Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre build­ing at Farm Road, St Joseph, where they met with Duke to dis­cuss health and safe­ty is­sues. They were lat­er giv­en a hear­ing by WASA's chair­man Rom­ney Thomas, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Alan Poon-King, and oth­er ex­ec­u­tives, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the Board of Di­rec­tors.

Talks re­sumed dur­ing the day on Thurs­day, end­ing at 9.45 pm.