One week af­ter a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee’s re­port in­to the op­er­a­tions of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) claimed trade unions rep­re­sent­ing em­ploy­ees were en­gaged in the sup­ply of goods and ser­vices to the or­gan­i­sa­tion, con­fir­ma­tion has come from the head of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) that his wife owns an en­gi­neer­ing firm which has been award­ed con­tracts by WASA in the past.

PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke said Black­stone En­gi­neer­ing Tech­nolo­gies Lim­it­ed, which is owned by his wife, Kim­ber­ly and oth­ers, was owed out­stand­ing monies by WASA. The com­pa­ny is con­tract­ed to re­pair and in­stall pipelines.

Duke, how­ev­er, re­fused to dis­close the amount owed. While Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les said he was un­able to say how much the com­pa­ny was owed at this time, he added, "to my un­der­stand­ing, they have re­ceived mil­lions from WASA over the years and it is a sit­u­a­tion of a se­ri­ous con­flict of in­ter­est. That should con­cern the cit­i­zens." Gon­za­les said these pay­ments were made un­der the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship regime. Gon­za­les said WASA will pay Black­stone En­gi­neer­ing Tech­nolo­gies Lim­it­ed once the con­tracts are le­git­i­mate.

De­fend­ing the work done by the com­pa­ny which was es­tab­lished in 2005/2006, Duke claimed the com­pa­ny had not re­ceived any con­tracts in the last six years.

At a me­dia brief­ing at the PSA’s Head Of­fice, Aber­crom­bie Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Duke dis­tanced him­self from his wife’s com­pa­ny. “Black­stone En­gi­neer­ing Tech­nolo­gies Lim­it­ed has been pro­vid­ing ser­vices in this coun­try since 2006…2005 there­abouts. That is a com­pa­ny mined by my wife and whoso­ev­er she has in that com­pa­ny. I have no part of that com­pa­ny. I have nev­er been part of the com­pa­ny at all.

“Where­so­ev­er the com­pa­ny gets work, it does its work. I have no bones about that. And WASA owe we mon­ey, he (Gon­za­les) didn’t tell you that? They owe we mon­ey how much years now, he is not say­ing that.”

Duke ar­gued, “It is a le­git­i­mate com­pa­ny just like the com­pa­ny of your oth­er friends.”

Claim­ing he had to live here too, Duke said, “We pay our tax­es and we ten­der for all con­tracts as any­body else but since the PNM came in­side, we have not got­ten one sin­gle con­tract. It’s been six years now but we still sur­viv­ing. We have not got­ten one con­tract and they owe us mon­ey six years now.”

He chal­lenged Gon­za­les to make pub­lic the fig­ure owed to his wife “who was not work­ing any­where.”

Con­tact­ed lat­er by the Sun­day Guardian to as­cer­tain ex­act­ly how much mon­ey was owed to his wife, Duke said, “We won’t want to di­vulge that. They owe us monies.”

He al­leged it was “po­lit­i­cal spite” that had led to WASA not set­tling the out­stand­ing debts.

Asked sev­er­al times to speak with his wife or for a con­tact num­ber for her, Duke said, “She wouldn’t say that. She would not be in­volved in that. I am the me­dia man, I could talk straight.”

Ques­tioned why his wife was not able to speak about a com­pa­ny which she owns, Duke said, “All she will say is that she owns the com­pa­ny, that’s all. She not go­ing any fur­ther than that.”

Asked who are the di­rec­tors in the com­pa­ny, he said, “My wife will de­cide that, that is her busi­ness. It is not any­body on my fam­i­ly side. She has her own busi­ness.”

At the press con­fer­ence, Duke la­belled Gon­za­les a “nasty man” for ad­vis­ing re­porters to seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion from him re­gard­ing some of the con­tents in the re­port.

The 135-page re­port found, “top-heavy man­age­ment of WASA is in­ef­fec­tive and the con­tents of freely ne­go­ti­at­ed Col­lec­tive Agree­ments re­veal a phi­los­o­phy of se­cur­ing in­dus­tri­al peace by ced­ing con­trol of WASA to the unions, to the point the unions have now ef­fec­tive­ly sub­sumed many man­age­ment re­spon­si­bil­i­ties."

It al­so claimed, "There ex­ists com­pelling ev­i­dence as well that the unions have be­come sup­pli­ers of goods and ser­vices to the au­thor­i­ty whilst it seems that man­age­ment turns a blind eye to this re­al­i­ty."

The re­port claimed the unions had been en­cour­ag­ing mem­bers not to co­op­er­ate with in­ter­nal au­dits and in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to wrong­do­ing at WASA.

The sub-com­mit­tee which was chaired by Gon­za­les pre­sent­ed the re­port to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in De­cem­ber.

NUGFW starts its own in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to claims

In light of the se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions con­tained in the re­port, Pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) James Lam­bert said his union had be­gun its own in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the claims.

The NUGFW rep­re­sents ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,500 dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers at WASA and Lam­bert said, “We have had our sec­tion of­fi­cers at WASA be­gin in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to this as­pect.”

WASA work­ers are al­so rep­re­sent­ed by the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA).

The unions were al­so ac­cused in the re­port of en­cour­ag­ing their mem­bers not to co­op­er­ate with in­ter­nal au­dits in­to le­git­i­mate in­ves­ti­ga­tions of in­ter­nal wrong­do­ing, as well as re­fus­ing to sign any char­ter to im­prove ac­count­abil­i­ty and good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance with­in WASA.

The re­port la­belled WASA’s over­all fi­nan­cial per­for­mance as poor with chron­ic deficits be­ing a reg­u­lar fea­ture.

The com­mit­tee wrote, "This is a breed­ing ground for cor­rup­tion and there is con­cern that there is a cul­ture of cor­rup­tion in the pro­cure­ment of ser­vices by the au­thor­i­ty."

The re­port found suc­ces­sive man­age­ment teams had proven pow­er­less to the unions' en­croach­ment on the au­thor­i­ty's rights to man­age, di­rect and own its op­er­a­tional af­fairs.

It stat­ed, “Part of the prob­lem in­side of WASA is that man­age­ment ac­count­abil­i­ty has been sac­ri­ficed for po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age."

Re­spond­ing briefly to the al­le­ga­tions be­ing lev­elled against the trade union move­ment in­side WASA, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) Michael An­nisette raised con­cerns as he ques­tioned, “Where is the so­cial di­a­logue that needs to take place with part­ner agen­cies?”

He said the com­mit­tee had com­plet­ed its in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to WASA but had some­how man­aged not to in­clude the unions.

Re­spond­ing to the nar­ra­tive that the unions were in charge at WASA, An­nisette added, “There is a Board there. If the Board al­lows the unions to per­form the func­tions of the man­age­ment and run a com­pa­ny, you should get rid of the Board.”

An­nisette said there are no bad work­ers, but bad poli­cies and poor man­agers.

Pres­i­dent of the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) Deryck Richard­son said they do not pro­vide any goods or ser­vices what­so­ev­er to WASA.

The col­lec­tive agree­ments with the three unions ex­pired in 2013.

Gon­za­les: We have em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence

Gon­za­les said, "Every­thing we (com­mit­tee) have ar­rived at can be sup­port­ed by em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence be­cause we are very care­ful when this re­port makes its way in­to the pub­lic do­main, we must be pre­pared to de­fend every­thing.

“So it was not an at­tempt to tar­nish any­one. It was not an at­tempt to go af­ter any­one. It was an at­tempt to re­or­gan­ise WASA but the coun­try must know the state of af­fairs of the or­gan­i­sa­tion."

Of the three unions, Gon­za­les could not say which had ben­e­fit­ed the most from WASA.

"I haven't done that deep as­sess­ment as to who ben­e­fit­ed the most be­cause I would have to do some cal­cu­la­tions."

Gon­za­les added, "All these bad prac­tices over the years ought to be re­versed. If you have strong man­agers these things will not hap­pen. Strong man­age­ment will fos­ter a cul­ture of trans­paren­cy, de­cen­cy and good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance.

"It is in our col­lec­tive in­ter­est we work to­geth­er in solv­ing the prob­lems as dif­fi­cult as they might be. This coun­try is suf­fer­ing for wa­ter and we have been do­ing so for the longest while. If we don't fix this prob­lem it is go­ing to come with a po­lit­i­cal price."

He promised to deal with all wrong­do­ing in WASA head-on as he vowed, “I am about tack­ling these prob­lems if that is what it takes to get wa­ter flow­ing in peo­ple's taps."