Shas­tri Boodan

GML Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Salary ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) are on track to meet Fri­day’s dead­line, with the mat­ter ex­pect­ed to reach the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties by the end of the week.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath gave the up­date on Wednes­day af­ter dis­trib­ut­ing book grants at his Cou­va South con­stituen­cy of­fice. He said he was sat­is­fied with the progress fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions with WASA Act­ing CEO Dane Maraj and meet­ings with PSA pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste and the union’s ex­ec­u­tive ear­li­er this week.

“I vis­it­ed WASA head­quar­ters on Mon­day and spoke with the PSA pres­i­dent and mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive to en­sure the process was moved along speed­i­ly, with­out cut­ting cor­ners, en­sur­ing that we dot­ted our I’s and crossed our T’s,” Padarath said.

He con­firmed the ne­go­ti­a­tions were now “far ad­vanced” and that the par­ties were on course to meet the agreed Fri­day dead­line. Once com­plet­ed, WASA will for­ward the doc­u­men­ta­tion, in­clud­ing cost­ings and fi­nal de­tails, to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties for con­sid­er­a­tion. The mat­ter will then pro­ceed through the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer, the Min­istry of Fi­nance, and oth­er rel­e­vant agen­cies.

Padarath not­ed that the PSA had raised con­cerns about mov­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tions be­yond WASA be­fore terms and con­di­tions were set­tled. He said the ob­jec­tive was to en­sure agree­ment at the au­thor­i­ty be­fore ad­vanc­ing the mat­ter to the min­istry.

“I’m very hap­py to re­port that it has far ad­vanced and we will meet the dead­line of Fri­day. That is good news for the union,” he said.

The min­is­ter added that on­go­ing di­a­logue with the PSA pres­i­dent was strength­en­ing re­la­tions and help­ing to move the process for­ward. More de­tails are ex­pect­ed when the ne­go­ti­a­tions are for­mal­ly hand­ed over to the min­istry on Fri­day.