For­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has de­liv­ered a scathing cri­tique of the Gov­ern­ment’s man­age­ment of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), warn­ing that re­cent ex­ec­u­tive ap­point­ments sig­nal a re­turn to failed lead­er­ship and ques­tion­able de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

And he has in­di­cat­ed that he has apol­o­gised to for­mer WASA CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day over the Gov­ern­ment’s ter­mi­na­tion of his con­tract.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Op­po­si­tion’s of­fice at Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment’s di­rect in­ter­ven­tion in the util­i­ty, and took aim at the ap­point­ment of Jee­van Joseph as act­ing WASA CEO of WASA, la­belling him a “non-per­former” dur­ing his pre­vi­ous stint at the util­i­ty and ques­tion­ing the mo­tive be­hind his re­turn.

“A new CEO or act­ing CEO who was a low-lev­el man­ag­er, non-per­former in WASA was el­e­vat­ed to the po­si­tion of CEO with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. Ab­solute­ly no ex­ec­u­tive ex­pe­ri­ence, no ex­pe­ri­ence what­so­ev­er, no re­cruit­ment process put in place. Per­sons fill­ing se­nior ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions in that au­thor­i­ty with­out any re­cruit­ment cri­te­ria,” Gon­za­les said.

“I be­lieve that WASA need­ed to go in a di­rec­tion where it was de­politi­cised and you get ex­ec­u­tive man­agers who are qual­i­fied based on their ex­pe­ri­ence, based on their aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for a very im­por­tant util­i­ty com­pa­ny.”

Back in May, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath de­scribed WASA’s for­mer ex­ec­u­tive struc­ture as “heavy,” point­ing out that 34 po­si­tions had cost the au­thor­i­ty over $70 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly. A re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise fol­lowed, in­clud­ing the ap­point­ment of a new ex­ec­u­tive board and var­i­ous se­nior man­age­ment po­si­tions un­der Joseph, fol­low­ing the dis­missal of Hal­l­i­day and his ex­ec­u­tive team.

Gon­za­les again yes­ter­day re­it­er­at­ed that in­di­vid­u­als pre­vi­ous­ly forced to leave the or­gan­i­sa­tion amid cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions were be­ing brought back in­to se­nior ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions.

“Can you imag­ine one of these peo­ple were fired by Gan­ga Singh for cor­rup­tion. One of these ex­ec­u­tives who was re­moved from WASA be­cause of al­leged cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ties by one for­mer min­is­ter, Gan­ga Singh, is now with­in the man­age­ment of that au­thor­i­ty.”

In dis­miss­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est claim that the cur­rent WASA re­struc­tur­ing plan would re­sult in sig­nif­i­cant cost sav­ing of $30 mil­lion, Gon­za­les fur­ther de­fend­ed Hal­l­i­day. He said af­ter lur­ing Hal­l­i­day to T&T through high-lev­el dis­cus­sions, in­clud­ing with Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, he (Gon­za­les) was forced to apol­o­gise to him.

“I begged for­give­ness, and I told him, and I am be­ing very hon­est with you, as I have al­ways been, I told him in a sim­ple What­sApp mes­sage, as I didn’t speak to him on the phone, I sent him a What­sApp mes­sage and told him that the be­hav­iour of this Gov­ern­ment and the be­hav­iour of this min­is­ter is not Trinidad and To­ba­go and that is not our val­ue sys­tem of this coun­try and he said yes he un­der­stands that very well,” he said, re­fer­ring to the fact that Hal­l­i­day left his po­si­tion at the Bar­ba­dos Wa­ter Au­thor­i­ty to come to T&T.

Gon­za­les al­so di­rect­ly chal­lenged Padarath over state­ments made in Par­lia­ment re­gard­ing the leas­ing of a build­ing on Scott-Bushe Street, which had been ear­marked as the of­fice for WASA’s trans­for­ma­tion plan team un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Min­is­ter Padarath claimed the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment signed a lease agree­ment val­ued at $3 mil­lion, a fig­ure Gon­za­les dis­missed as whol­ly in­ac­cu­rate.

“The lease was for a pe­ri­od of 24 months and the lease was for $14,000 per month, with a to­tal cal­cu­la­tion of about three hun­dred and some­thing thou­sand dol­lars for the two years. The same build­ing, the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter stood in the Par­lia­ment and lied to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go that WASA rent­ed a build­ing for 3 mil­lion dol­lars.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on Gon­za­les claims yes­ter­day, Padarath said Gon­za­les should speak to the al­leged mil­lions in con­tracts award­ed to a par­tic­u­lar con­struc­tion com­pa­ny un­der his watch at WASA. He al­so called on him to ex­plain how a cam­paign man­ag­er and sub-agent of his for the Gen­er­al Elec­tion ad­ver­tised to the pub­lic by the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion walked away with “a sole se­lect con­tract of 3.1 mil­lion at WASA days be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion.”