At a time when the coun­try is en­grossed in the pos­si­ble fall­out of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery clo­sure, comes word that month­ly salaries at the state-run Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) run at more than $91 mil­lion. This pays some 5,150 per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees and in­cludes tem­po­rary and con­tract work­ers and means in one year the au­thor­i­ty spends over $1.1 bil­lion in salaries alone.

WASA chair­man Rom­ney Thomas gave those fig­ures in re­sponse to ques­tions from the Sun­day Guardian about the au­thor­i­ty’s wage bill.

“Av­er­age month­ly salary and wages $91.475m,” Thomas wrote via What­sapp.

Asked for clar­i­fi­ca­tion if the amount was $91 mil­lion, he replied, “Yep.”

Dur­ing a re­cent re­port, the Par­lia­ment’s Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee (PAC) said WASA is over­staffed by some 2,000 em­ploy­ees. The com­mit­tee said in the last fis­cal year, WASA’s ex­pen­di­ture amount­ed to $2.88 bil­lion while its in­come for the same pe­ri­od was $709 mil­lion. The short­fall of $1.9 bil­lion was cov­ered by a gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion.

Over the last decade, gov­ern­ment has forked out $10 bil­lion in sub­ven­tions to WASA.

At a time when there is more scruti­ny on the way mon­ey is spent at state-owned en­ter­pris­es, WASA’s fi­nan­cial fig­ures raise many con­cerns.

The Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) was sup­posed to re­view WASA’s fi­nan­cial state­ments to be­gin a rate re­view ear­li­er this year, but that has not been done as the RIC says they don’t have the in­for­ma­tion they need to be­gin the process.

A source at the RIC told the Sun­day Guardian that even if a rate re­view be­gan on Sep­tem­ber 27, it would not be com­plet­ed be­fore the end of Jan­u­ary 2019.

Un­til then, cit­i­zens will con­tin­ue to pay 31 cents US per cu­bic me­tre of wa­ter—al­most a third of the re­gion­al bench­mark price of US$1 per cu­bic me­tre of wa­ter, leav­ing lit­tle hope that a rate in­crease can start to bridge the gap in the au­thor­i­ty’s in­come and ex­pen­di­ture in the near fu­ture.

The au­thor­i­ty al­so con­tin­ues to lose wa­ter every day, as its age­ing in­fra­struc­ture needs a $3 bil­lion cash in­jec­tion for re­pairs and re­place­ment of trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion lines.

In June, most cit­i­zens were shocked to learn that Petrotrin’s wage bill amount­ed to some $2.19 bil­lion year­ly or an av­er­age of $45,000 per em­ploy­ee month­ly (see side­bar). At the time, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan said the clo­sure of Petrotrin was in part brought on by the ex­or­bi­tant wage bill.

Yes­ter­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte told the Sun­day Guardian he is well aware of WASA’s wage bill.

“Of course, I get re­ports from WASA on a month­ly and a quar­ter­ly ba­sis, so I am ful­ly aware of WASA’s po­si­tion. I am aware and stay in touch with my board, as a min­is­ter I am very hands-on,” he said.

Le Hunte de­clined to an­swer when asked if he be­lieves a month­ly $91 mil­lion wage bill is sus­tain­able giv­en the coun­try’s cur­rent eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion and es­pe­cial­ly in light of the move to shut down Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions be­cause it is drain­ing the coun­try’s fi­nances. In­stead, he re­it­er­at­ed that his fo­cus at WASA is not re­trench­ing work­ers but cut­ting out con­trac­tors to save mon­ey.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment ear­li­er this week, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so said Gov­ern­ment is not at this time con­sid­er­ing any staff re­duc­tions at WASA or the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC).

“If you’re pay­ing em­ploy­ees and con­trac­tors al­so and you fo­cus on re­mov­ing con­trac­tors and let work­ers do the job they’re paid for, you’re sav­ing mon­ey,” Row­ley said.

“WASA wasn’t cre­at­ed to cre­ate jobs but to sup­ply wa­ter. If you have peo­ple be­ing paid twice for the same job, the con­sid­er­a­tion isn’t re­duc­ing jobs by con­trac­tors, but us­ing them where they’re ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary and let­ting em­ploy­ees on the pay­roll do the jobs.”

Again re­in­forc­ing the PM’s stance on the state en­ti­ty yes­ter­day, Le Hunte said, “I think the Prime Min­is­ter was clear about the in­ten­tion to deal with any WASA work­ers—he made his state­ment very clear—the fo­cus of our ac­tiv­i­ty at WASA is util­is­ing the work­ers that we have at WASA to deal with the in­her­it­ed is­sues that we got at WASA in try­ing to fix the leaks, to fix the prob­lems at WASA. I don’t where whether the bill is this, whether the bill is that, this is what we are do­ing.”

The Petrotrin com­par­i­son

In June, Petrotrin’s board put out ads in the dai­ly news­pa­pers re­veal­ing its an­nu­al $4.15 bil­lion in op­er­at­ing costs.

Two months lat­er, on Au­gust 28, Petrotrin chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet de­scribed the com­pa­ny’s re­fin­ery as a can­cer and an­nounced its clo­sure. On Fri­day, Es­pinet an­nounced that Petrotrin would cease all op­er­a­tions on No­vem­ber 30 and its em­ploy­ees would be giv­en their ex­it pack­ages on that day.

The state-owned oil gi­ant has 3,437 per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees and 1,229 tem­po­rary em­ploy­ees. In June the com­pa­ny said its wage bill made up 52.8 per cent of that cost or $2.19 bil­lion.

The av­er­age month­ly salary of a per­ma­nent em­ploy­ee is $45,000 while tem­po­rary em­ploy­ees have an av­er­age salary of $21,000 month­ly, the com­pa­ny said. The com­pa­ny al­so re­vealed its over­time bill for 2016 and 2017 was an av­er­age $22.7 mil­lion per month.

Speak­ing about the Petrotrin re­struc­tur­ing at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment meet­ing in Mara­bel­la on Sep­tem­ber 6, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan said there was a car­pen­ter at Petrotrin who earned $70,000 in over­time in one month.

Khan said Petrotrin work­ers were “by and large re­spon­si­ble for their own demise.”