Retrenchment is quietly taking place at the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) and close to 600 workers have already been offered a Voluntary Separation of Employment Package (VSEP), Opposition Senator Dr Lester Henry said in the Senate yesterday.
Henry said he was informed some of these workers were told they had to accept the VSEP and were actually fired.
He charged that the fired workers were being replaced by “family and friends.” Henry was making his contribution to the debate on a government bill to increase the 2012/2013 budget by $2.8 billion. Claiming WASA was a “hotbed of corruption and nepotism,” he said, “They have been implementing VSEP very quietly under IDB conditionalities because of the big money they got recently.
“Close to 600 workers have already been given VSEP. Some of them said they were told they have to take it. It was not voluntary. They were fired. And every time they send home someone, they hire someone’s friend or family.”
Henry said the number of workers at WASA had not actually decreased.
This caused Minister of the Environment and Water Resources Ganga Singh to spring to his feet.
Singh said “six hundred and forty-something” workers voluntarily took the VSEP, which was being done in accordance with International Monetary Fund conditionalities and in consultation with several trade unions, he said.
Singh asked Henry to provide evidence that workers who were sent home were being replaced.
Henry said: “You want me to call names and addresses?”
But without providing the evidence, he continued his attack on WASA, charging that its favourite firms were “SIS and TOSL.”
“They are winning all the favourite contracts. And what about the manager for whom a BMW was procured, and a Range Rover? My information is that this person is going for a third vehicle.”
Henry said he knew that after his disclosures there would be an interrogation of WASA employees. He also took a shot at the Airports Authority (AA), which he said was being run like the personal parlour of a certain official with qualifications that could not be verified.
Henry said mismanagement at the AA had resulted in serious security lapses, as the number of officers on duty at the airport is lower than the required figure. He said he had more bombshells to drop about other state enterprises, including one for Finance Minister Larry Howai involving the Clico matter. He also threw a parting shot at former CAL chairman Rabindra Moonan, who has been appointed chairman of the Housing Development Corporation.
“How could you sit there with straight faces and tolerate that?” he asked. Moonan’s new appointment has been criticised by the Opposition because of what they say was his “disastrous” record at CAL.
Henry, indicating that the Opposition did not support the bill requesting an increase in the budget, dismissed Howai’s boast that the economy had seen growth. (YB)