Security firms warn WASA to pay up $75M debt

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Pri­vate Se­cu­ri­ty As­so­ci­a­tion (TP­SA) is urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment and the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) to ur­gent­ly pay up an es­ti­mat­ed $75 mil­lion in out­stand­ing pay­ments owed to 13 con­tract­ed se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies, warn­ing that con­tin­ued non-pay­ment could re­sult in se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers re­fus­ing to re­port for du­ty.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, TP­SA spokesper­son Raquel-Ann Uzoe­me­ka said the as­so­ci­a­tion could no longer guar­an­tee of­fi­cers would con­tin­ue work­ing if their wages re­mained un­paid.

“We’re not threat­en­ing to with­hold ser­vices. What we’re say­ing is that we no longer have any con­trol over the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers de­ployed by our mem­ber com­pa­nies. We can­not guar­an­tee that em­ploy­ers will be able to mo­ti­vate staff to con­tin­ue work­ing with­out pay,” she said.

“Salaries need to be paid. The fun­da­men­tal oblig­a­tion of a se­cu­ri­ty agency is to pay its work­ers, and our mem­bers have not been able to ful­fil that oblig­a­tion.”

Uzoe­me­ka said the debt had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over the past three years and stressed that the as­so­ci­a­tion’s de­ci­sion to raise the mat­ter pub­licly should not be viewed as a po­lit­i­cal at­tack.

Ac­cord­ing to her, re­peat­ed ef­forts were made over the years to en­gage WASA’s man­age­ment on the non-pay­ment of in­voic­es, but com­mu­ni­ca­tion has since bro­ken down. The as­so­ci­a­tion is now seek­ing the in­ter­ven­tion of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath.

“We have tried to keep this mat­ter be­tween our mem­bers and WASA. We have writ­ten to them and sought meet­ings on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions. We are not is­su­ing an ul­ti­ma­tum for Fri­day. We are sim­ply say­ing that com­pa­nies reach­ing out to us can no longer con­trol the sit­u­a­tion be­cause they are un­able to pay their work­ers and set­tle out­stand­ing wages,” she said.

Uzoe­me­ka not­ed that se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers are re­spon­si­ble for pro­tect­ing sev­er­al WASA fa­cil­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rur­al ar­eas. She said the is­sue ex­tends be­yond safe­guard­ing the au­thor­i­ty’s as­sets and could have wider im­pli­ca­tions for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and pub­lic health.

“We have of­fi­cers who are fac­ing evic­tion and can­not af­ford rent. Moth­ers are strug­gling to pay for school ex­pens­es and day­care. This is a so­cial is­sue. It is al­so a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sue. If these of­fi­cers with­draw their ser­vices and fa­cil­i­ties are left un­manned, it will not on­ly af­fect wa­ter in­fra­struc­ture but could be­come a pub­lic health con­cern as well,” she said.

WASA’s bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices re­port­ed­ly in­creased from just over $75 mil­lion last year to $84 mil­lion this year.

Re­spond­ing to the as­so­ci­a­tion’s con­cerns, Padarath said con­tin­gency mea­sures were al­ready in place should work­ers with­draw their ser­vices.

“WASA has ad­vised that these bills were ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over more than three years un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion. Some pay­ments have been made in re­cent times. Ef­forts will con­tin­ue,” he said via What­sApp.

He added that WASA’s man­age­ment had as­sured him that con­tin­gency arrange­ments were in place but that dis­cus­sions with ser­vice providers would con­tin­ue to avoid any dis­rup­tion.

For­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les yes­ter­day ac­knowl­edged that out­stand­ing pay­ments ex­ist­ed dur­ing his tenure but main­tained that con­trac­tors were paid reg­u­lar­ly enough to con­tin­ue op­er­a­tions.

“Since the UNC came in­to gov­ern­ment, they (the se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies) have not re­ceived any pay­ments and are un­able to pay their staff. While I ac­knowl­edge there was an ac­cu­mu­la­tion of out­stand­ing pay­ments un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, WASA made con­sis­tent pay­ments to these com­pa­nies so they could meet pay­roll oblig­a­tions and con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing ser­vices. There was nev­er any dis­rup­tion,” Gon­za­les said.

How­ev­er, Uzoe­me­ka said she could not con­firm whether all se­cu­ri­ty firms had gone un­paid un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion.

She re­called one com­pa­ny, owed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $15 mil­lion, be­ing of­fered a pay­ment of $500,000 re­cent­ly. Ac­cord­ing to Uzoe­me­ka, the com­pa­ny re­ject­ed the pro­pos­al.