Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress gov­ern­ment will shelve and re­scind the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee re­port on the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA)—which rec­om­mend­ed staff cuts—and all state sec­tor ne­go­ti­a­tions will start with no less than ten per cent.

The promise was made by Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas as she mount­ed the UNC’s San­gre Grande plat­form last Sat­ur­day and de­tailed some of the par­ty’s Work­ers’ Agen­da.

A vo­cal con­tin­gent of PSA mem­bers in green jer­seys was present, as was for­mer PSA pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste. Thomas said she was ho­n­oured to be on the plat­form in work­ers’ in­ter­est “to open­ly ad­vance the on­ly rea­son­able re­sponse to an un­rea­son­able gov­ern­ment,” re­it­er­at­ing that her first an­nounce­ment as PSA pres­i­dent was a promise to re­move the PNM.

Say­ing work­ers must be free from dic­ta­tor­ship, op­pres­sion and tyran­ny, Thomas said, “That means free from the PNM ... the word PNM ‘is fol­lowed by the word re­trench­ment’ ... this is how they ‘love you so and take good care’ of you?” Thomas added, list­ing the num­bers of jobs lost dur­ing PNM’s tenure, and com­par­ing salary in­creas­es of­fered to work­ers to Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials’ re­cent in­creas­es.

“But the sun is on the hori­zon,” Thomas said, adding the PSA’s as­so­ci­a­tion with the UNC had been go­ing on for years since the union be­lieved T&T wouldn’t sur­vive un­der an­oth­er term of the PNM.

Thomas said the UNC has com­mit­ted to shelv­ing the Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee re­port on WASA.

“As one of my ob­jec­tives to pro­tect the in­ter­est and wel­fare of my mem­bers, I say to all state sec­tor work­ers, a vote for the UNC is a vote that ne­go­ti­a­tions will start with no less than ten per cent ... I say to WASA work­ers, a vote for the UNC is a vote to re­scind the PNM Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee re­port!” she said to loud cheers.

“I say to BIR and Cus­toms work­ers, a vote for the UNC is a vote to re­peal the TTRA act ... I say to con­tract work­ers in the pub­lic ser­vice, a vote for the UNC is a vote for the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of con­tract jobs; and to NIB work­ers, it’s a vote to im­ple­ment the agreed up­on of 2014/16 nine per cent salary agree­ment. I say to all state sec­tor work­ers: it’s a vote for pref­er­en­tial ac­cess to HDC homes and an im­proved med­ical plan!”

That 2021 WASA re­port cit­ed cor­rup­tion, po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age, un­ac­count­abil­i­ty and mis­man­age­ment, and that over the years, the state-owned com­pa­ny be­came over­staffed, un­pro­duc­tive, un­re­spon­sive and dys­func­tion­al. It rec­om­mend­ed that WASA be in­cre­men­tal­ly dis­solved and re­placed with a Wa­ter Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny with­in a re­vised wa­ter sec­tor mod­el.

The re­port said one of the first tasks of the in­ter­im man­age­ment team to re­struc­ture WASA would be to re­vert to the ap­proved or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture, in­volv­ing wean­ing off more than half of its 4,800 work­force. The re­port said WASA is op­er­at­ing in ex­cess of the 1999 Cab­i­net-ap­proved struc­ture by more than 3,152 em­ploy­ees.

Thomas said she was send­ing a mes­sage to “the Red.” “Yel­low is the code! Labour! Labour! Labour! On April 28, who you vot­ing for?”