JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Fol­low­ing the shake-up at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), where ten se­nior of­fi­cials were sent home, at least two man­agers at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) have now been dis­missed.

Guardian Me­dia was told two man­agers were is­sued dis­missal let­ters on Tues­day, with ad­di­tion­al ter­mi­na­tions ex­pect­ed. When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the man­agers said they were not pre­pared to com­ment at this time.

Calls and mes­sages to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath and Min­is­ter in the min­istry Clyde El­der went unan­swered up to press time.

The dis­missals come af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised con­cerns about the ex­is­tence of a spe­cial “non-dis­con­nec­tion list” at T&TEC, which she read out in Par­lia­ment. The list in­clud­ed the names of cur­rent Op­po­si­tion and for­mer gov­ern­ment mem­bers. The util­i­ty lat­er in­di­cat­ed the list was an in­ter­nal cour­tesy arrange­ment, ap­plied in some cas­es to of­fice hold­ers who were not nec­es­sar­i­ly aware they were in­clud­ed.

Dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion in Par­lia­ment on June 15, the Prime Min­is­ter al­so made al­le­ga­tions against at­tor­ney and cur­rent Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land, claim­ing he had failed in his du­ty by not pur­su­ing le­gal ac­tion on T&TEC’s be­half against an er­rant ten­ant be­lieved to be a po­lit­i­cal al­ly.

A week lat­er, Scot­land and a mem­ber of his le­gal cham­bers re­ceived a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter con­cern­ing their rep­re­sen­ta­tion of T&TEC in its at­tempt to re­cov­er $2.4 mil­lion in un­paid charges from Fla­vorite Foods.

In June last year, months af­ter tak­ing of­fice, the Gov­ern­ment dis­missed then WASA CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day and nine oth­er se­nior of­fi­cials.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said the mat­ter will be raised at to­day’s Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence.