Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Per­sons who were pre­vi­ous­ly sus­pend­ed for “ques­tion­able” is­sues are re­turn­ing to the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and for­mer ju­nior staffers are be­ing el­e­vat­ed over qual­i­fied, ex­pe­ri­enced ex­ec­u­tives, claims for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les.

Gon­za­les, the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) Chief Whip, made the claims in a state­ment yes­ter­day, af­ter the WASA board an­nounced it had fired CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day.

Gon­za­les said he had been re­li­ably in­formed of the de­vel­op­ment by WASA sources and ac­cused the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment of “scan­dalous and re­pul­sive purg­ing” at WASA.

He al­so con­demned Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath’s at­tack on the char­ac­ter of Hal­l­i­day in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day night.

He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of “dis­man­tling key pil­lars of WASA’s trans­for­ma­tion with lit­tle re­gard for mer­it, process, or pub­lic in­ter­est, but for nar­row par­ti­san and cor­rupt in­ter­ests.”

Warn­ing about vic­tim­i­sa­tion of com­pe­tent pro­fes­sion­als not aligned with the UNC, Gon­za­les said, “Tech­nocrats are be­ing tar­get­ed be­cause of their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right to sup­port a po­lit­i­cal par­ty of their choice, while the UNC in­stalls friends and al­lies with lit­tle re­gard for qual­i­fi­ca­tions and com­pe­tence.

“Such ac­tions threat­en to re­turn WASA to a politi­cised, in­ef­fi­cient state en­ti­ty where pro­cure­ment is based on po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions, with­out val­ue-for-mon­ey, trans­paren­cy, or im­proved ser­vice for cit­i­zens. When UNC wins - on­ly UNC wins!”

Ac­cus­ing Padarath of char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion, “cow­ard­ly hid­ing un­der the cov­er of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege,” Gon­za­les said Hal­l­i­day, a proven and well-re­spect­ed pro­fes­sion­al who was re­cruit­ed through a trans­par­ent process, was de­scribed as a ‘”failed CEO from Bar­ba­dos.”

“Such lan­guage is not on­ly reck­less, it’s mis­in­formed, dis­re­spect­ful and deeply un­be­com­ing of the of­fice of a se­nior Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter!” Gon­za­les added.

He said Hal­l­i­day ranked high­est among a re­gion­al field of can­di­dates fol­low­ing a rig­or­ous and trans­par­ent re­cruit­ment process and had a proven track record at the Bar­ba­dos Wa­ter Au­thor­i­ty (BWA).

Gon­za­les de­tailed Hal­l­i­day’s achieve­ments at BWA adding, “These are pre­cise­ly the qual­i­ties re­quired to res­cue WASA from decades of un­der-per­for­mance.”

But he said Gov­ern­ment, through its WASA board, has abol­ished the ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship, re­cruit­ed un­der an ex­ten­sive trans­par­ent process, “now re­plac­ing them with hand-picked in­di­vid­u­als.”

Gon­za­les claimed two per­sons didn’t go through any trans­par­ent re­cruit­ment process, oth­ers have ques­tion­able cre­den­tials and some are al­leged to have en­gaged in cor­rupt prac­tices for se­cur­ing con­tracts in the past.

“Many are re­tirees, brought back with­out demon­stra­ble ca­pac­i­ty to dri­ve dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, sound gov­er­nance or proven ex­pe­ri­ence in ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship of a wa­ter util­i­ty com­pa­ny,” Gon­za­les claimed.

On the re­turn of oth­ers pre­vi­ous­ly sus­pend­ed and for­mer ju­nior staffers now be­ing el­e­vat­ed over qual­i­fied, ex­pe­ri­enced ex­ec­u­tives, Gon­za­les added, “The UNC Gov­ern­ment and its board of com­mis­sion­ers should hold their heads in col­lec­tive shame ...”

Re­li­able sources con­firm moves are on for a for­mal state­ment from Hal­l­i­day to be read in­to Par­lia­ment’s records - in ac­cor­dance with the Stand­ing Or­ders - to clear his pro­fes­sion­al char­ac­ter af­ter Padarath’s at­tack.