SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke who has been on no-pay leave at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) for 11 years, yes­ter­day chal­lenged the au­thor­i­ty’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Dr Lennox Sealy to fire him from the state-owned au­thor­i­ty.

The move fol­lowed a let­ter Sealy sent to Duke last month in­form­ing him of his “un­ten­able na­ture of the in­def­i­nite time off” from WASA “for union’s busi­ness” and re­quest­ed a de­ci­sion in writ­ing rel­a­tive to his con­tin­ued em­ploy­ment by March 26.

Duke, who holds the po­si­tion of As­sis­tant Man­ag­er, Em­ploy­ee Re­sourc­ing at WASA, failed to re­spond to Sealy’s re­quest.

He was pro­mot­ed to this po­si­tion in 2012 while on no-pay leave, which has spanned the pe­ri­od No­vem­ber 2009 to De­cem­ber 2020.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the out­come of the PSA’s na­tion­al elec­tions held on De­cem­ber 14, 2020, would re­quire that Duke’s no pay leave pe­ri­od be ex­tend­ed for a fur­ther four years - up to De­cem­ber 2024.

This would re­sult in a to­tal leave pe­ri­od of 15 years.

WASA grant­ed ap­proval for full time off with­out pay con­sis­tent with Ar­ti­cle 37 of the sub­sist­ing col­lec­tive agree­ment be­tween WASA and the PSA from No­vem­ber 2009 to De­cem­ber 14, 2020.

Sealy in a March 9 let­ter in­formed Duke that this arrange­ment can­not con­tin­ue “in­def­i­nite­ly due to its un­ten­able na­ture” and rec­om­mend­ed that he as­sessed his cur­rent po­si­tion.

In an April 14 let­ter, Sealy re­mind­ed Duke that “ac­cord­ing­ly, the au­thor­i­ty places its po­si­tion on record that your con­tin­ued em­ploy­ment with the PSA is not in the best in­ter­est of the au­thor­i­ty. Fur­ther­more, your cur­rent port­fo­lio as Mi­nor­i­ty of Leader of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is a con­flict of in­ter­est base on the Civ­il Ser­vice Act of Trinidad and To­ba­go Chap­ter 23:01, Sec­tion (10) (1).”

Sealy asked Duke to re­spond in writ­ing by Wednes­day April 21 “to bring this mat­ter to a close as fail­ure to do so will re­sult in the ter­mi­na­tion of our em­ploy­ment.”

Yes­ter­day, Duke took to his Face­book page to vent his feel­ings on the is­sue and to at­tack Sealy and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les.

Urg­ing WASA’s 5,000 work­ers to pre­pare them­selves for bat­tle, Duke said he will not cow­er or bow out of this fight.

Duke took um­brage to Gon­za­les’ state­ment that the three unions rep­re­sent­ing WASA work­ers are in­volved in an in­ces­tu­ous re­la­tion­ship with man­age­ment.

In­sist­ing that the State-owned or­gan­i­sa­tion has been made a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball, Duke said to­day the PNM wants to pull the unions’ mem­ber­ship apart.

“And it is my in­ten­tion in this mes­sage to say to all WASA em­ploy­ees along with the man­age­ment that you have noth­ing to fear. Do not fear one sin­gle thing be­cause we have a plan. We will take the breath out of WASA. We will cause WASA to pause for a cause. We are not play­ing games. We have this well worked out...well mapped out.”

Re­spond­ing to Sealy’s let­ter, Duke said WASA is threat­en­ing to ter­mi­nate him be­cause he “wrote for time off based on our col­lec­tive agree­ment which is a reg­is­tered court or­der.”

Duke said once you ap­ply for leave af­ter an elec­tion, you get leave au­to­mat­i­cal­ly.

“It is not up for dis­cus­sion. So I ap­plied af­ter elec­tion (THA) last Jan­u­ary. I re­quest my full time off to con­tin­ue my work.”

Duke said he is em­ployed in the PSA and not at WASA.

“I am on no-pay leave.”

Train­ing his guns on Sealy, Duke said “if you think you are man, you fire me. If you think you mad and crazy Lennox Sealy, you fire me on Wednes­day I am not re­spond­ing to your let­ter.”

Duke warned Sealy that he has al­ready in­struct­ed his lawyers to bring crim­i­nal charges against him.

“What you are do­ing is en­gag­ing in what is called vic­tim­is­ing the trade unions and I want to put it out there that there are laws pro­tect­ing work­ers...that Lennox Sealy can­not do what he thinks he wants to do,” Duke said.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Gon­za­les said what Sealy and his team are do­ing is con­sis­tent with Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy to trans­form WASA.

“And in so do­ing ini­ti­ate a new cul­ture of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, trans­paren­cy and cor­po­rate gov­er­nance in WASA. The sit­u­a­tion con­cern­ing Wat­son Duke be­ing on no-pay leave since 2009 is very much con­sis­tent and the fact that pre­vi­ous man­age­ment failed to take ac­tion to pro­tect the in­ter­est of the au­thor­i­ty and the peo­ple of T&T is ev­i­dent of the mad­ness that took place at WASA over the last decade.”

Gon­za­les said Duke has his right to re­act and re­spond how­ev­er he wish­es.

“But his re­ac­tion will not pre­vent the trans­for­ma­tion that is need­ed in WASA in or­der for cit­i­zens to get a re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply in their taps.”