Blue Waters management assures operations not affected

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­[email protected]

Em­ploy­ees of bot­tled wa­ter man­u­fac­tur­er Blue Wa­ters Lim­it­ed were yes­ter­day as­sured that op­er­a­tions re­main un­af­fect­ed and their jobs se­cure, fol­low­ing a com­pa­ny-wide meet­ing con­vened by man­age­ment amid on­go­ing con­cerns sur­round­ing the de­ten­tion of the com­pa­ny’s own­er, Do­minic Hadeed.

The meet­ing, which brought staff across the or­gan­i­sa­tion to­geth­er, was con­vened af­ter Hadeed, his wife Genevieve and her aunt Star Sab­ga were placed un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) by po­lice as part of an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion that has gripped na­tion­al at­ten­tion.

The Hadeeds were tak­en in­to cus­tody last Wednes­day, af­ter po­lice ex­e­cut­ed court-ap­proved search war­rants at their West­moor­ings home and the Blue Wa­ters’ Trinci­ty com­pound, seiz­ing elec­tron­ic de­vices of the Hadeeds and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers at their home and from the com­pa­ny’s com­pound.

Against that back­drop, man­age­ment at Blue Wa­ters moved to ad­dress un­ease among em­ploy­ees yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands CEO Pradeep Sub­ri­an head­ed the lead­er­ship team and man­age­ment fo­cused pri­mar­i­ly on pro­vid­ing re­as­sur­ance to staffers and en­sur­ing them that sta­bil­i­ty with­in the com­pa­ny would be main­tained.

“We give the as­sur­ance that every­thing is run­ning as usu­al, no­body needs to be con­cerned about a job or salaries or any­thing like that. Every­thing is op­er­at­ing as per usu­al,” one em­ploy­ee who was part of the meet­ing said they were told.

The ses­sion, which was led by se­nior man­age­ment, is un­der­stood to have em­pha­sised con­ti­nu­ity of op­er­a­tions and the com­pa­ny’s com­mit­ment to its work­force.

Staff were al­so told ex­plic­it­ly that there would be no dis­rup­tion to salaries or em­ploy­ment, de­spite the un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing re­cent de­vel­op­ments in­volv­ing the Hadeeds.

While op­er­a­tions re­main steady, em­ploy­ees de­scribed a no­tice­ably sub­dued at­mos­phere with­in the com­pa­ny’s en­vi­ron­ment.

The staff mem­ber said the emo­tion­al im­pact of the sit­u­a­tion was ev­i­dent among work­ers, many of whom had a close pro­fes­sion­al re­la­tion­ship with Hadeed.

“The at­mos­phere is sad be­cause he was a loved boss. Every­body had loved him and they’re just con­cerned with what is hap­pen­ing with him,” the em­ploy­ee said.

“Every­body is work­ing as per usu­al, but you could see it … you’re feel­ing like some­thing is miss­ing,” the em­ploy­ee said, de­scrib­ing a “melan­choly vibe” across the work­place.

Man­age­ment did not ad­dress or pro­vide any de­tails re­gard­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the Hadeeds’ de­ten­tions.

Em­ploy­ees were al­so told that the com­pa­ny would not be com­ment­ing on the mat­ter, nor would there be any in­ter­nal dis­cus­sions about the sit­u­a­tion.

“They are not com­ment­ing on any­thing. They’re not talk­ing about what hap­pened… they have no com­ment at all on any­thing re­gard­ing the sit­u­a­tion,” the em­ploy­ee said.

Staff were al­so ad­vised to re­frain from en­gag­ing with the is­sue pub­licly, par­tic­u­lar­ly on so­cial me­dia plat­forms. Man­age­ment re­port­ed­ly cau­tioned em­ploy­ees against post­ing, com­ment­ing or par­tic­i­pat­ing in on­line dis­cus­sions re­lat­ed to the mat­ter.

Mean­while, se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers at the Blue Wa­ters yes­ter­day said they were in­struct­ed to keep the me­dia off the com­pound when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed.

A few min­utes lat­er, CSO Wasim Daniel ar­rived. When told of the rea­son Guardian Me­dia was there, he said, “Nah no com­ment.”

He then walked away.

About Blue Wa­ters

When Blue Wa­ters Prod­ucts Ltd was found­ed by Do­minic Hadeed in 1999, it had 12 em­ploy­ees, in­clud­ing just one sales­man and two trucks, op­er­at­ed in an 800-square-foot space, and was set­ting up in a mar­ket that al­ready had 42 brands of bot­tled wa­ter.

To­day, the com­pa­ny op­er­ates a mod­ern bot­tling fa­cil­i­ty es­ti­mat­ed to be 250,000 square feet on the Or­ange Grove Es­tate in Trinci­ty.

In the last 27 years, the com­pa­ny has grown to be one of the largest bot­tlers of wa­ter in the Caribbean.

That growth was based on a num­ber of ac­qui­si­tions and joint ven­tures, in­clud­ing an ex­ist­ing wa­ter bot­tler, Aqua Pur, in 2001, and a joint ven­ture arrange­ment with the Pep­si Co­la fran­chise in T&T.

Hadeed ac­quired state land in Or­ange Grove from the French bev­er­age gi­ant, Pern­od Ri­card, in March 2007.

He com­mis­sioned its flag­ship bot­tled wa­ter and arte­sian well fa­cil­i­ty at Or­ange Grove Es­tate, Tacarigua, in mid-2008.

Hadeed al­so served as T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) pres­i­dent from 2011 to 2013 and re­ceived the as­so­ci­a­tion's Ex­cel­lence in Ser­vice Award in 2016 and Man­u­fac­tur­er of the Year (large cat­e­go­ry) award in 2022. He was al­so named EY Mas­ter En­tre­pre­neur of the Year in 2015 and Blue Wa­ters re­ceived the De­loitte Best Man­aged Com­pa­ny in 2019.