Two Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) em­ploy­ees and a judge re­ceived death threats and are con­cerned for their lives af­ter whistle­blow­ers re­vealed an al­leged over­time and at­ten­dance fraud scheme at the au­thor­i­ty’s Tacarigua Re­gion­al Com­plex site.

The judge was warned that “she could get a Dana See­ta­hal.”

The al­leged over­time scheme, on­go­ing at the Tacarigua site for more than 15 years, costs tax­pay­ers as much as $500,000 a year. Work­ers are al­so re­port­ed­ly be­ing paid for un­worked shifts, with em­ploy­ees sign­ing in and not per­form­ing du­ties. Whistle­blow­ers al­leged the scheme oc­curs at most WASA sites across the coun­try, wast­ing mil­lions in pub­lic funds. Whistle­blow­ers al­leged WASA ex­ec­u­tives knew about the sit­u­a­tion and com­mis­sioned au­dits. An in­de­pen­dent in­tel­li­gence re­port was al­so con­duct­ed.

It found that “The TRC yard/site has be­come a fo­cal point of se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns due to on­go­ing is­sues re­lat­ed to shift ma­nip­u­la­tion, favouritism in over­time al­lo­ca­tion, and es­ca­lat­ing in­ci­dents of threats, in­tim­i­da­tion, theft and sab­o­tage. These ac­tiv­i­ties are be­lieved to be or­ches­trat­ed by in­di­vid­u­als us­ing gang-like tac­tics to ex­ert con­trol over the site’s op­er­a­tions.

“The se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion at the TRC site rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant threat to per­son­nel safe­ty, op­er­a­tional in­tegri­ty, and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion. Ur­gent ac­tion is re­quired to ad­dress the un­der­ly­ing is­sues of mis­con­duct, cor­rup­tion, and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, and to re­store con­fi­dence in the site’s se­cu­ri­ty and man­age­ment process­es. Fail­ure to take de­ci­sive ac­tion could have se­vere con­se­quences for the or­gan­i­sa­tion and its stake­hold­ers,” the re­port found.

The re­port stat­ed that the whistle­blow­ers have a high score of ver­i­fi­ca­tion and au­then­tic­i­ty and can be trust­ed.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les said the mat­ter is cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of the in­ter­nal au­dit de­part­ment of the au­thor­i­ty.

“In light of this, it may not be pru­dent for me to com­ment at this time. The Board and the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment of WASA con­tin­ue to en­sure that process­es are not abused that un­der­mine the in­ter­est of the au­thor­i­ty and the cit­i­zens. Where such prac­tices are dis­cov­ered, I can as­sure you that ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion will be tak­en,” he said.

Find­ings of in­de­pen­dent re­port on the Tacarigua scheme

Shift Ma­nip­u­la­tion: In­tel­li­gence in­di­cates that cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als with­in the site man­age­ment are ma­nip­u­lat­ing shifts to favour spe­cif­ic em­ploy­ees for over­time op­por­tu­ni­ties, cre­at­ing an at­mos­phere of favouritism and un­fair prac­tices.

Threats and In­tim­i­da­tion: De­ci­sion-mak­ers, su­per­vi­sors, and man­agers have re­port­ed­ly been sub­ject­ed to threats and in­tim­i­da­tion tac­tics, like­ly in re­sponse to re­sis­tance against shift ma­nip­u­la­tion and favouritism. The sit­u­a­tion es­ca­lat­ed to the ex­tent that threats were di­rect­ed to­wards an ex­ter­nal se­nior ju­di­cial ex­ec­u­tive. This pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant risk to the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of per­son­nel at the site. There is al­so al­leged union in­volve­ment.

Theft, equip­ment abuse and sab­o­tage

In­ci­dents of theft, abuse of equip­ment, and sab­o­tage have been re­port­ed, in­di­cat­ing a broad­er pat­tern of mis­con­duct and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty with­in the site. These ac­tions not on­ly com­pro­mise op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy but al­so pose a risk to the safe­ty of per­son­nel and the in­tegri­ty of site as­sets.

The re­port called for po­lice in­ter­ven­tion.

Whistle­blow­ers claimed they were out­ed to the ca­bal by a man­ag­er. In­stead of man­age­ment dis­ci­plin­ing those in­volved, whistle­blow­ers were re­port­ed­ly sent on leave (on the grounds of be­ing pro­tect­ed) and trans­ferred. 

“I met it so more than ten years ago. Key play­ers are in place mak­ing sure it hap­pens be­cause they are in­volved in all sorts of things—run­ning women, blocks. That’s how they fa­cil­i­tate their things.

“It’s a whole clique of guys who come to­geth­er. They de­cide who will stay home, al­low­ing an­oth­er per­son to work for them. And when the next week comes, the per­son who worked will be re­lieved, while the oth­er per­son stays home and gets it. You could watch the ros­ter and see a man work­ing for how­ev­er long, so a man could plan his days to suit how the ros­ter is,” the whistle­blow­ers said.

There are four shifts—A, B, C and D. Each week a ros­ter is re­leased, with each em­ploy­ee as­signed to dai­ly shifts of ei­ther 7 am to 3 pm, 3 pm to 11 pm, or 11 pm to 7 am. How­ev­er, a group of 13 em­ploy­ees, led by one se­nior em­ploy­ee, al­leged­ly ma­nip­u­lat­ed the sys­tem, al­low­ing them to rack up over­time pay­ments.

“This is an ex­am­ple of how it works. C is work­ing the night shift. B is sup­posed to come in the day, from 7 am to 3 pm. B then stays home, C con­tin­ues work­ing…In the evening, B is work­ing, but C is sup­posed to come at night. C didn’t come in the night, so B con­tin­ues work­ing. So that’s how they are ‘danc­ing.’ They will do that for the month. The man­agers know what is go­ing on. Just as I showed you, I showed them. They know,” whistle­blow­ers claimed.

The over­time ca­bal re­port­ed­ly then de­mand­ed that oth­er em­ploy­ees join the dance. They start­ed cut­ting in­to the reg­u­lar shifts of oth­er em­ploy­ees, af­fect­ing their salaries.

The whistle­blow­ers said they re­ceived death threats, with one of them forced to make a po­lice re­port af­ter two men threat­ened him at the Tacarigua site. The whistle­blow­ers are al­so al­leged­ly sub­ject­ed to in­tim­i­da­tion tac­tics, with ca­bal mem­bers leav­ing back ex­tra work for them and leav­ing com­pa­ny ve­hi­cles with­out diesel.

Ac­cord­ing to the whistle­blow­ers, the man­agers be­lieve that as long as enough work is com­plet­ed, they don’t care what hap­pens oth­er­wise. The whistle­blow­ers said em­ploy­ees are even paid ex­tra du­ty al­lowances dur­ing their shifts for ba­sic tasks.

Pa­per trail

Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­tiga­tive Desk viewed copies of let­ters and emails sent to WASA man­agers and ex­ec­u­tives.

On April 21, 2024, a whistle­blow­er wrote to his di­rect su­per­vi­sor. He re­ferred to a meet­ing held on March 27 where he com­plained about the un­equal dis­tri­b­u­tion of over­time at the Tacarigua site.

“The un­equal dis­tri­b­u­tion of over­time high­light­ed in the ini­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tion rais­es con­cerns of fair­ness and com­pli­ance with the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act and prin­ci­ples of equal­i­ty in treat­ment. It is vi­tal for all em­ploy­ees to be giv­en eq­ui­table op­por­tu­ni­ties, es­pe­cial­ly my­self. Fail­ure to do so not on­ly con­tra­venes statu­to­ry oblig­a­tions but al­so erodes the trust and con­fi­dence that work­ers should have in the work­place,” the whistle­blow­er wrote.

Four days lat­er, on April 24, he wrote again to his su­per­vi­sor.

“The long and short of this mat­ter is that both you and ***names oth­er man­ag­er*** were al­ways aware of the is­sues plagu­ing this de­part­ment. But in­stead of do­ing what is right to ‘clean up house’ and rec­ti­fy these is­sues, you both took the ap­proach to sweep the is­sues un­der the rug,” he ac­cused.

On June 13, an­oth­er whistle­blow­er wrote to WASA’s Hu­man Re­source De­part­ment, ac­cus­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion of at­tempt­ing to turn him from a vic­tim to a vil­lain af­ter he was is­sued a trans­fer let­ter.

“I was sent on long va­ca­tion leave with the promise that the is­sues would be dealt with. I am still wait­ing years af­ter ini­tial­ly rais­ing the is­sue with…*names peo­ple*….notwith­stand­ing, the PSA Month­ly paid rep­re­sen­ta­tive has cho­sen to ig­nore and side with man­age­ment as, to date, no re­quest has been for­mal­ly made to meet and dis­cuss this is­sue, while of­fi­cers who are to pro­tect the pub­lic purse seem to con­tin­ue to mis­be­have in pub­lic of­fice (by ac­tion or in­ac­tion) while thou­sands of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars con­tin­ue to find its way in the pock­ets of the gold­en boys at North West Re­gion every month…

“So, we have ar­rived at the most im­por­tant point of this mis­sive: the Au­thor­i­ty has put me, *names an­oth­er whistle­blow­er* and my moth­er’s lives at risk. It was said, my moth­er ‘Could get a Dana See­ta­hal,’” he wrote.

On June 25, the sec­ond whistle­blow­er was is­sued a trans­fer let­ter by HR from the Wa­ter Dis­tri­b­u­tion (North Cen­tral) De­part­ment to the Wa­ter Dis­tri­b­u­tion (South West) De­part­ment—Op­er­a­tions Di­vi­sion in the ca­pac­i­ty of Sys­tems Op­er­a­tor from June to Au­gust.

On Ju­ly 2, he re­ceived an­oth­er trans­fer let­ter from HR. He was in­struct­ed to re­port to du­ty at the La Hor­quet­ta Area Of­fice—Op­er­a­tions Di­vi­sion from Ju­ly un­til fur­ther no­tice.

In re­sponse, on Ju­ly 3, the whistle­blow­er wrote to man­age­ment, ac­cus­ing them of bias to­wards him and the oth­er whistle­blow­er.

In May 2023, a re­duc­tion in over­time memo was is­sued to the op­er­a­tions de­part­ment by WASA’s then-act­ing Op­er­a­tions Di­vi­sion Di­rec­tor Shaira Ali.

“Giv­en the man­date to ef­fec­tive­ly man­age op­er­at­ing costs, each dis­trict is re­quired to im­ple­ment mea­sures to re­duce over­time costs with ut­most ur­gency.

As such, fur­ther to the on­board­ing of the Leak Re­pair Con­trac­tors on Fri­day 26 May 2023, kind­ly note the fol­low­ing to take ef­fect im­me­di­ate­ly—All in-house Leak Re­pair Crews are to com­plete works with­in nor­mal work­ing hours as far as pos­si­ble un­less PRI­OR ap­proval is grant­ed by the CEO/Di­rec­tor, Op­er­a­tions; and Emer­gency works out­side nor­mal work­ing hours will be un­der­tak­en by con­trac­tor crews,” she wrote.

In Oc­to­ber 2021, a Cab­i­net sub-com­mi­tee ap­point­ed to re­view the op­er­a­tions of WASA found that the au­thor­i­ty’s over­time bill be­tween 2016 and 2020 was $468.3 mil­lion.

One over­time work­er made a lit­tle more than $500,000 in 43 months.