Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas says the union will be meet­ing with the WASA ex­ec­u­tive team again to re­solve 1,700 griev­ances, which she claimed were cre­at­ed by the last gov­ern­ment.

Yes­ter­day, act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), Jee­van Joseph, con­vened his first of­fi­cial meet­ing with the lead­er­ship of the au­thor­i­ty’s three recog­nised trade unions at WASA’s Head Of­fice in St Joseph.

Joseph, ac­com­pa­nied by mem­bers of the Ex­ec­u­tive Evo­lu­tion Team, met with Fe­l­isha Thomas, the Pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA); Christo­pher Streete, Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW); and Deryck Richard­son, Pres­i­dent of the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA), along with their re­spec­tive ex­ec­u­tive teams.

A state­ment said the meet­ing marked the com­mence­ment of for­mal en­gage­ment be­tween the new WASA ex­ec­u­tive and the unions. Dis­cus­sions were de­scribed as cor­dial and con­struc­tive, with a fo­cus on a num­ber of long­stand­ing in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions mat­ters. These in­clud­ed un­re­solved work­er griev­ances, is­sues re­lat­ed to pro­mo­tions and ap­point­ments, and the sta­tus of ne­go­ti­a­tions for out­stand­ing bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods.

Joseph ac­knowl­edged the es­sen­tial role of the unions as strate­gic part­ners in the on­go­ing trans­for­ma­tion of the Au­thor­i­ty. He re­it­er­at­ed man­age­ment’s com­mit­ment to re­shap­ing WASA in­to a more ef­fi­cient, sus­tain­able, and cus­tomer-cen­tric or­gan­i­sa­tion, with par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on the eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of wa­ter to all com­mu­ni­ties.

When con­tact­ed af­ter the talks, the PSA leader said the meet­ing was an in­tro­duc­to­ry one with the new WASA ex­ec­u­tive team.

Thomas said an­oth­er meet­ing was sched­uled to treat and re­solve the 1,700 griev­ances cre­at­ed by the last ad­min­is­tra­tion (Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment), is­sues af­fect­ing pen­sion­ers, fill­ing of va­can­cies and oth­er mat­ters, in­clud­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty."