MARVIN SOUNDS WASA ALARM

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

For­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of em­bark­ing on a hir­ing spree at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) dur­ing its first sev­en months in of­fice, claim­ing the move has in­flat­ed the au­thor­i­ty’s an­nu­al wage bill by an es­ti­mat­ed $60 to $70 mil­lion.

How­ev­er, cur­rent Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has re­ject­ed Gon­za­les’ as­ser­tions, con­tend­ing that the in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed is de­void of prop­er con­text and mis­rep­re­sents the cir­cum­stances at WASA.

Dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) me­dia brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les dis­closed the writ­ten re­sponse he re­ceived from Padarath re­gard­ing ques­tions on how many in­di­vid­u­als were hired at WASA be­tween April 29 and No­vem­ber 30, 2025.

Padarath stat­ed that 426 peo­ple were hired dur­ing the pe­ri­od un­der re­view. A break­down of the re­cruit­ment by cat­e­go­ry shows that ap­prox­i­mate­ly one quar­ter of those hires were for ad­min­is­tra­tive and cler­i­cal po­si­tions. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, 67 were em­ployed as non-skilled dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers, while 12 were hired at the ex­ec­u­tive lev­el.

The writ­ten re­sponse al­so de­tailed the salaries at­tached to each po­si­tion. These range from $8,013 per month for a staff as­sis­tant to $60,000 per month for a di­rec­tor.

Gon­za­les said he worked out the cost to tax­pay­ers.

“When we did the cal­cu­la­tion, the 426 peo­ple that were em­ployed as of No­vem­ber last year, it will cost you, the tax­pay­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go, up­wards of $60 mil­lion,” Gon­za­les said.

But Gon­za­les said he has heard that since No­vem­ber, the em­ploy­ment rate has crept up­wards.

“The in­for­ma­tion that has come to me is that as of De­cem­ber last year, there are over 500 to 600 per­sons that were em­ployed in the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, cost­ing you, the tax­pay­ers of this coun­try, over $70 mil­lion.”

Gon­za­les said he al­so asked Padarath for the cri­te­ria used to hire the 426 peo­ple but that was not pro­vid­ed.

“They can­not say what was the re­cruit­ment cri­te­ria, how those per­sons were em­ployed. Maybe Twig­gy (Chris­tine Levia) and Matara (Matara French) may know. Maybe Stark En­ter­tain­ment may know. Come and tell us. Twig­gy may bring her bell to ring, and she might tell you, the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, what was the re­cruit­ment cri­te­ria, what was your ed­u­ca­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tion to fill the post.”

Gon­za­les point­ed to what he de­scribed as the irony of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment’s $60 mil­lion hir­ing ex­er­cise, re­call­ing that in May 2025, the Prime Min­is­ter fa­mous­ly tore up a doc­u­ment on live tele­vi­sion said to be the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s WASA Trans­for­ma­tion Plan, a move the Gov­ern­ment had claimed at the time would have saved the coun­try $30 mil­lion.

“They are now rid­ing the tax­pay­ers’ backs of this coun­try with an in­creased salary tag of over $70 mil­lion,” he said.

The Arou­ca/Lopinot MP added that he has al­so heard of a scan­dal with­in WASA that led to what he claimed was the fir­ing of an HR di­rec­tor. He claimed peo­ple seek­ing em­ploy­ment in WASA had to pay man­agers be­tween $5000-$10,000 to get the job.

How­ev­er, Padarath has pushed back against the crit­i­cism, stat­ing that sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als were en­gaged on short-term con­tracts to ad­dress what he de­scribed as a “sig­nif­i­cant hu­man re­source gap” at WASA.

“The ex­pen­di­ture that for­mer Min­is­ter Gon­za­les speaks about in terms of the in­creas­ing wage bill at WASA on an an­nu­al ba­sis is noth­ing but a to­tal and bla­tant lie,” Padarath said.

“What has hap­pened is usu­al­ly, there will be short-term em­ploy­ment and that is what has oc­curred over the last cou­ple of months to sup­ple­ment the chal­lenges that we were fac­ing in terms of per­sons be­ing pro­mot­ed, as well as new projects com­ing on stream. We need­ed to fa­cil­i­tate those and there­fore we ex­er­cised bring­ing on short-term con­tract em­ploy­ees and these are usu­al­ly for about three to six months.”

Padarath said peo­ple were hired on a “needs ba­sis.”

“The com­pa­ny then eval­u­ates if their projects re­quire the man­pow­er. Most times, per­sons are hired for that spe­cif­ic pe­ri­od and it comes to an end un­til new projects come up.”

Guardian Me­dia asked Padarath what per­cent­age of the 426 hires were short-term ap­point­ments. How­ev­er, he in­di­cat­ed he was in Cab­i­net at the time and would seek the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion and pro­vide it at a lat­er date.

How­ev­er, Padarath said Gov­ern­ment has still been able to slash wastage at WASA.

“What we have sought to do is to re­duce the ex­ec­u­tive from what they had from 35 mem­bers, to just about sev­en or eight mem­bers.”

As it re­lates to the al­le­ga­tions made about the HR di­rec­tor, Padarath said the for­mer em­ploy­ee was re­hired on a short-term con­tract, which was sub­se­quent­ly re­newed. How­ev­er, he stat­ed that the in­di­vid­ual lat­er opt­ed to re­sign rather than con­tin­ue, cit­ing fam­i­ly com­mit­ments and health is­sues as the rea­sons for his de­par­ture.

Ef­forts to ob­tain a con­tact for the for­mer em­ploy­ee were un­suc­cess­ful.

With re­spect to Gon­za­les’ claim that peo­ple can pur­chase a job at WASA, Padarath said, “The for­mer min­is­ter should know very well that if he has al­le­ga­tions, he knows where to take those al­le­ga­tions to the ap­pro­pri­ate au­thor­i­ties.”