Gonzales going after Barry over WASA hiring claims

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

As the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter con­tin­ues to face ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia over ques­tion­able hir­ing prac­tices at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les is warn­ing Bar­ry Padarath that he is “com­ing af­ter him” when Par­lia­ment re­sumes.

In fact, Gon­za­les yes­ter­day cau­tioned Padarath that he has more in­for­ma­tion to re­veal.

On Sun­day, Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­tiga­tive Desk re­port­ed that WASA hired nine so­cial me­dia in­flu­encers from a pro­posed group of 12, with com­bined month­ly salaries of $85,398.92, as part of 416 ap­point­ments made af­ter the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia the in­flu­encers were placed un­der reg­u­lar job ti­tles and are be­ing used with­in cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions to de­fend the Gov­ern­ment on­line and counter crit­ics.

While Padarath has re­spond­ed to an­oth­er me­dia house re­gard­ing the al­le­ga­tions, he has yet to re­spond to calls and mes­sages from Guardian Me­dia.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from an­oth­er me­dia house about the hir­ing process, Padarath main­tained the in­di­vid­u­als were le­git­i­mate­ly em­ployed af­ter go­ing through WASA’s re­cruit­ment process. He stressed that as line min­is­ter, he is not in­volved in WASA’s day-to-day hu­man re­source, fi­nance or pro­cure­ment op­er­a­tions and said he was sat­is­fied with the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to him by the au­thor­i­ty. Padarath al­so dis­missed sug­ges­tions that the in­di­vid­u­als were hired for pur­pos­es out­side of their stat­ed job roles.

But Gon­za­les, the for­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip, is far from sat­is­fied with this ex­pla­na­tion.

“If they were hand­picked, he must say so. If he doesn’t, I’m com­ing af­ter him in the Par­lia­ment. He can run but he can­not hide from this scan­dal. I have in­for­ma­tion that it’s not just 426 em­ploy­ees. It has now reached 600 per­sons. All hand­picked and un­qual­i­fied and it will cost the tax­pay­ers up­wards of 100 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly,” Gon­za­les said.

He added that Padarath seemed flat- foot­ed when he ad­dressed the mat­ter.

“Padarath was caught with his prover­bial pants down and he can­not jus­ti­fy the trav­es­ty he has brought up­on the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty. He is the line min­is­ter for WASA and the buck stops with him. He can­not lay the blame on the HR de­part­ment of WASA.”

Gon­za­les said he was the first to ex­pose what he called a “scan­dal” when he asked cer­tain ques­tions in Par­lia­ment in Jan­u­ary 2026. He said Padarath has a du­ty to tell the coun­try what the qual­i­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ments of the “so­cial me­dia per­son­nel” were and their job de­scrip­tions.

“He must tell the coun­try when the jobs were ad­ver­tised and who in­ter­viewed them for the jobs. Show the coun­try the rank­ings of the oth­er per­sons who ap­plied for the jobs,” Gon­za­les said.

Asked how he would go af­ter Padarath in Par­lia­ment, Gon­za­les re­spond­ed, “Ques­tions on No­tice and ques­tions for writ­ten re­spons­es. I will pur­sue all av­enues in the Par­lia­ment so that he takes full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for this scan­dal. He must state what are the qual­i­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ments for the var­i­ous po­si­tions and whether these so-called in­flu­encers are qual­i­fied for the po­si­tions, as well as whether they com­pet­ed fair­ly with oth­er qual­i­fied cit­i­zens.”

Par­lia­ment was pro­rogued on May 22 and the new ses­sion starts on June 5.

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia tried to con­tact Padarath through text mes­sages and phone calls. The min­is­ter re­spond­ed around 3 PM, in­di­cat­ed that he was in a meet­ing and asked for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on what the re­quest for an in­ter­view would en­tail. Guardian Me­dia ex­plained it had to do with the Sun­day Guardian sto­ry but he did not re­spond af­ter that.

Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that the work­ers were en­gaged on six-month con­tracts un­der stan­dard WASA job ti­tles.

Those iden­ti­fied in­clude so­cial me­dia per­son­al­i­ty Stark Grimes, al­so known as “Stark,” who is re­port­ed­ly earn­ing $8,667 per month and was seen work­ing at WASA; Nishard Wat­son ($8,593.64); Crys­tal Doughty, known as “Nat­ty Royale” ($10,450); Den­zil Carr ($8,593.64); Isi­ah Mootoo, known as “Mr Miss” ($8,667), who was al­so seen work­ing at WASA; Mari­ah Wal­cott ($10,667); and Matara French, known as “Matara” ($8,593.64), who was like­wise ob­served at the au­thor­i­ty. Guardian Me­dia al­so con­firmed that Chris­tine Levia, known as “Twig­gy,” is list­ed in a WASA re­port as a fa­cil­i­ties of­fi­cer earn­ing $12,500 month­ly, while Keinell Gar­cia, known as “Ring­leader,” ap­pears in records as an of­fice as­sis­tant earn­ing $8,667 per month.

Matara: I am qual­i­fied for my po­si­tion

Matara French, who was named as one of the “in­flu­encers” hired by WASA fol­low­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion, has de­fend­ed her em­ploy­ment, say­ing she works hard at her job.

In a video post­ed to so­cial me­dia plat­forms yes­ter­day, Matara said she has “changed her life” and chose to re­spond to those crit­i­cis­ing her in a civilised way.

Say­ing she has “no shame” to tell peo­ple what she does at WASA, Matara re­vealed, “I cut­ting grass, paint­ing pipes, main­tain­ing the pump sta­tions, work­ing, rak­ing, and stuff like that.”

She said while peo­ple are try­ing to “bring her down,” she is just grate­ful for a chance to work.

“Be­cause I’m work­ing for my mon­ey, I’m not beg­ging. And to see your own peo­ple up­set you’re work­ing. And they’re all on the ra­dio bring­ing you down, dis­crim­i­nat­ing you be­cause you’re look­ing for a way out of pover­ty.”

Matara said the sit­u­a­tion for her was quite sim­ple - the Gov­ern­ment cre­at­ed a job open­ing, and she ap­plied for it.

“Big re­spect and big man­ners to the Gov­ern­ment that I stand with, who put out job op­por­tu­ni­ties not on­ly for me, but for thou­sands of peo­ple. Big up Kam­la (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) to go and ap­ply to be em­ployed. And I went, and I got the po­si­tion that I think I was qual­i­fied for and I could do.”