Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment is not “at this time” con­sid­er­ing any staff re­duc­tion at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) or T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (TTEC), Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has con­firmed.

Row­ley did so at yes­ter­day’s Par­lia­ment sit­ting in re­ply to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions.

This fol­lowed Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte’s re­cent state­ment that WASA’s work­force is much larg­er than re­quired. Row­ley was asked if Gov­ern­ment in­tends re­duc­ing WASA and TTEC em­ploy­ment lev­els at this time.

Say­ing this wasn’t be­ing con­sid­ered “at this time, “Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus was on im­prov­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness of both util­i­ties.

On the im­pend­ing re­duc­tion of WASA con­trac­tors, Row­ley, how­ev­er, said, “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.

“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.”

On whether a wa­ter rate hike is in­tend­ed, Row­ley said rate in­creas­es are with­in the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion’s am­bit and they make rec­om­men­da­tions to Gov­ern­ment.

“But no such (rate hike) rec­om­men­da­tion is be­fore us at this time. But the RIC con­tin­ues to re­view the sit­u­a­tion, WASA will make its sub­mis­sion to RIC and at the end of that what RIC rec­om­mends to the coun­try will be what is con­sid­ered,” he said.

On queries about cas­es of chil­dren be­ing de­nied fund­ing by the Chil­dren’s Life Fund, Row­ley said the ba­sis on which the fund was es­tab­lished in law in­di­cates de­nials are part of the process, as not every ap­pli­ca­tion is guar­an­teed to find favourable re­sponse.

“I’m not aware we’re in a po­si­tion to make changes to the law to en­sure every ap­pli­cant is guar­an­teed to get favourable re­sponse,” he added.

Row­ley al­so replied a swift “Yes,” when asked whether Gov­ern­ment’s con­tract with the Wash­ing­ton-based “The Group DC” con­sul­tants will be re­newed. The firm, run by Arthur Collins, was con­tract­ed in 2016 for US$2.4 mil­lion for two years to lob­by for Gov­ern­ment in the US.

On the re­port by the Wil­son team which in­ves­ti­gat­ed - and com­plet­ed three months ago - the Sports Min­istry’s $150,000 set­tle­ment with a for­mer fe­male em­ploy­ee, Row­ley said he couldn’t com­ment on it or make it pub­lic since this could in some cas­es jeop­ar­dise a re­port’s ba­sis.

He said it has in­for­ma­tion that could dam­age peo­ple who’ve been re­ferred to and in keep­ing with nat­ur­al jus­tice prin­ci­ples, the re­port was made avail­able to those peo­ple so they can com­ment be­fore the re­port can be ad­vanced fur­ther. He said the re­port is like­ly to go fur­ther at “some point” when all checks are done and peo­ple giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­port to the rel­e­vant of­fi­cials.

On the re­port by Am­bas­sador Christo­pher Thomas on T&T’s ve­to of Do­mini­ca’s re­quest for an OAS fee waiv­er, Row­ley said the re­port made no ref­er­ence to any wrong­do­ing by For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Den­nis Moses in the is­sue. He said the best place for the re­port to be pre­sent­ed is via Par­lia­ment’s For­eign Af­fairs team soon.