SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Cou­va South MP Rudy In­dars­ingh is warn­ing the three unions rep­re­sent­ing work­ers at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) to ex­pect a mass dis­missal when the au­thor­i­ty rolls out its trans­for­ma­tion plan.

In­dars­ingh is­sued the warn­ing dur­ing a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress press con­fer­ence on Sun­day telling them not to be bait­ed by the Gov­ern­ment’s de­cep­tion and mis­in­for­ma­tion.

His com­ments came three days af­ter Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les an­nounced that 213 ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the au­thor­i­ty will be out of jobs ear­ly next year, as the first phase of the Cab­i­net-ap­proved trans­for­ma­tion plan is rolled out.

WASA’s ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment staff cur­rent­ly stands at 426 and the plan has rec­om­mend­ed a re­duc­tion of this by 50 per cent.

With­in hours of mak­ing the an­nounce­ment, Gon­za­les in an in­ter­view in this week’s Sun­day Guardian, stat­ed that all 426 man­age­ment po­si­tions at WASA will be made re­dun­dant.

“All po­si­tions will be­come re­dun­dant in or­der to fill the new po­si­tions in the new ex­ec­u­tive struc­ture. So in oth­er words, all po­si­tions with­in the cur­rent struc­ture would come to an end. There will be new job de­scrip­tions for all man­age­r­i­al po­si­tions which will be ad­ver­tised in­ter­nal­ly and ex­ter­nal­ly. This would al­low all man­agers at WASA to ap­ply for the posts based on their req­ui­site qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence,” Gon­za­les said.

He said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 man­age­ment po­si­tions will be filled and “all de­part­ments that are led by a man­ag­er, se­nior man­ag­er or var­i­ous lev­els of man­agers with­in the cur­rent struc­ture would come to an end.”

Re­spond­ing to the Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle, In­dars­ingh ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of not lev­el­ling with the au­thor­i­ty’s work­ers and pop­u­la­tion.

He said all the Gov­ern­ment has been do­ing was feed­ing the pop­u­la­tion with lies.

In­dars­ingh said he takes no com­fort in WASA’s chair­man Ravi Nan­ga telling his work­ers in the bar­gain­ing unit that have noth­ing to fear be­cause the Gov­ern­ment has a his­to­ry of shut­ting down State com­pa­nies.

“What you’ll have al­ready sig­nalled is a process of mass dis­missal. The play­book seems to be a rep­u­ta­tion of what tran­spired at Petrotrin.”

As a for­mer union leader, In­dars­ingh urged WASA’s three unions rep­re­sent­ing its mem­bers—the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), Na­tion­al Union and Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers and Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion not to fall for the Gov­ern­ment’s tricks.

“I want to tell you... do not fall for the pro­pa­gan­da, the ma­m­aguy, the de­ceit and the lies. The writ­ing is on the wall be­cause this Gov­ern­ment has un­der­mined the rule of law, and good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices in every as­pect of meet­ing and treat­ing with recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty unions in this coun­try and that is why I am say­ing to you this morn­ing it has noth­ing to do with re­struc­tur­ing, it has noth­ing to do with trans­for­ma­tion, it has to do with Row­ley­nomics which is hell-bent on send­ing home all the work­ers at WASA.”

He said the ob­jec­tive is to pri­va­tise WASA to ben­e­fit their friends and fi­nanciers.

In­dars­ingh al­so warned WASA staff and unions that the Gov­ern­ment was try­ing to “send you in­to a state of lull...in­to a state of com­pla­cen­cy,” and they should fight with all their might to save the jobs of their mem­bers.

Re­peat­ed calls to PSA pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste yes­ter­day went unan­swered while he did not re­spond to a What­sApp mes­sage.