PSA Pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke is de­mand­ing that WASA’s new chair­man Ravin­dra Nan­ga dis­miss his Head of Labour and Em­ploy­ee Re­la­tions as well as a Se­nior Man­ag­er of in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions for what Duke is call­ing, cor­rup­tion in pub­lic of­fice.
Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence this morn­ing, Duke said both Marielle Hillaire and Kaw­al Chun in­ter­fered in an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion to force the sus­pen­sion of em­ploy­ee, Ce­cil Matthews.

Duke said un­til they are re­moved, no mem­ber of the PSA will be al­lowed to go be­fore them for any dis­ci­pli­nary mat­ters. Duke said Matthews was ac­cused of al­low­ing a friend to ‘take a tush’ or dri­ve a WASA ve­hi­cle in Feb­ru­ary of this year. The ac­cu­sa­tion he said came from Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Mar­vin Gon­za­les who al­leged­ly saw the act. Min­is­ter Gon­za­les would lat­er de­ny this, telling Guardian Me­dia, “I nev­er made a re­port to WASA that I saw a work­er be­hav­ing in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly in Mac­queripe.

Duke how­ev­er went on to say that an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed that there was no wrong­do­ing on the part of the work­er. How­ev­er, both Hillaire and Chun sought to stron­garm the work­er in­to ‘telling the truth.’ Duke said Matthews was even vis­it­ed by for­mer CEO Dr Lennox Sealy who al­so al­leged­ly told him to con­fess. Duke said Matthews was then placed on half-pay, but when the PSA got in­volved in June, Matthews was told the de­ci­sion was re­versed on the con­di­tion that he takes the mat­ter no fur­ther. Duke claims this is why Dr Sealy re­signed from WASA. Duke be­lieves it is now time for both Hillaire and Chun to fol­low suit.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les dis­missed it as non­sense say­ing not on­ly did he not ac­cuse any work­er of the afore­men­tioned but added “it pains me as a cit­i­zen that Wat­son Duke oc­cu­pies our na­tion­al at­ten­tion and his di­a­tribes are dumped in­to the homes of cit­i­zens via tra­di­tion­al me­dia.” Gon­za­les said he holds his of­fice in high es­teem and will not dis­re­spect it by re­spond­ing to ‘this char­ac­ter.’

Re­porter: Akash Sama­roo